Pro Tips for Bargain Book Buyers

Rotate, Shuffle, and Mix Up Stock up on Section Shelves

Most buyers know that if you have bargain tables in your bookstore, you need to keep the stacks moving. You might move the same stacks around, adding new ones as they come in, or you may remove and replace everything at once, mixing new and old. The less intuitive practice is to do the same thing with your section shelves. One problem is that sections are often shelved by author and there isn't much you can do. Everything on shelves within 3½ to 5½ feet off the floor sells better than the books on the bottom and top shelves. So figure out how to do the shuffle. Customers get it, they won't mind. Create a feature shelf in the middle, so the alphabet gets a break. Feature W authors one week, A authors another. You probably already do something like this with cooking, reference, and art, without realizing you're doing it. Try it with fiction. The Archers and Zafóns will thank you.  

Stock up on Bargain Priced Poetry

If you have a poetry section (why would you not have a poetry section?), buy short quantities, as in 2s, and stock the shelves with poets you don't otherwise have. Watch what happens. You will notice more customers shopping the section, more customers buying poetry, and more customers coming in to shop. I don't know if this works with other sections, but poetry seems to work best. Try it and let me know how it goes.

Stack Bargain...

The best way to merchandise bargain books is to stack on tables whenever possible. The tables can be located anywhere in your bookstore, but you should put at least one good sized table near the front and/or point of purchase. If your space is too small for tables, or you just can't do tables for whatever reason, face out your bargain wherever possible. End caps, windows, below checkout counters, anywhere you can make it happen.

...Unstack Bargain

AND put a copy or two in your sections. For all you poor souls selling new books, put a copy or two right next to the new copies in on your section shelves. It sounds so wrong to some booksellers, right up to when they try it. The biggest pros in the business do this and, I'll say it again and again, they don't do things unless they work. This is especially great for bookstores in small spaces and sections you want to grow.

Reorder 

The best buyers buy the same titles over and over again. Of course they buy new arrivals and old chestnuts too, but a common thread is that they focus on what they bought before and, if a title has continued to sell well or sold out within a short time, they reorder.

One very large customer used to avoid reorders. It was a policy. And then a sales rep (not me) pointed out that the largest indies were constantly reordering. Suddenly this customer was increasing their title count every month.

If you buy 3 of something and it sells out, try ordering 5 next time. If that sells out, buy 10. There is no universe in which this doesn't work. Make your customers happy.

Most, if not all, remainder wholesalers will send you reorder lists on request, and probably send them to you regularly whether or not you request them. Some sites allow you to generate your own.

One side effect of reordering, or just looking at the lists and seeing which titles sold out, which authors sell best, that you may not have been as aware of as you would otherwise have been, is to make you a better overall buyer. You see trends and opportunities you might have missed.