Biblioracle on Costco reducing book sales

There’s been some big news surrounding Costco lately.

One of them was the announcement that the warehouse retailer had no plans to raise the price of its hot dog and soda combo above the $1.50 mark, where it has been since the 1980s.

Fantastic news. Good hot dog and a bargain.

The other news is not as good. Costco will stop stocking books year-round and instead focus its book sales efforts exclusively during the holiday shopping period.

Full disclosure, while I was once a Costco enthusiast, the main reason I visit now is this great hot dog and soda deal.

Even though I’ve been an independent book buyer for most of my book-buying life, Costco’s giant book apartment drew me in almost every time because I saw something I thought I’d read. and throw it in the cart with my decade’s supply of Advil and a 30-bottle variety pack of Sam Adams beer.

As one of the few major retailers that has made books an attractive impulse purchase, Costco has played a vital role in the overall bookselling ecosystem.

According to a New York Times article, Costco is retreating from this niche because of the physical labor required to store the books, which must be stacked by hand rather than deployed on pallets like other Costco merchandise. The weekly release of new books also required frequent stock moves, as unsold books had to be repackaged and returned to publishers.

Dating back to a practice dating back to the Great Depression era, unlike most other retail products, books are essentially rented by stores that charge a wholesale price and then receive full payment at detail when a book is sold. Rather than having to commit to storing a bunch of books that might not sell, retailers can return unsold books for a credit equivalent to the wholesale price amount. Even with the relatively limited number of titles Costco stocks, this could take a long time, especially if you’re talking about tens or hundreds of thousands of books scattered across the Costco universe.

Costco is not a hugely important sales channel overall, but it is believed to be a way for casual book buyers, who are less likely to visit a bookstore, to acquire their books. With the withdrawal of Costco, for all intents and purposes, Target is the only general merchandise retailer significantly engaged in stocking and selling books.

During the pandemic years, publishers saw robust sales, but those gains gradually disappeared, and here we have another potential hit to the bottom line. As a book lover, I hate to see places where we buy books disappear.

I will be under no illusion that a massive uprising by Costco shoppers could overturn this decision. But I have to believe that the already spartan atmosphere of Costco stores will be further diminished by the absence of books. Every time I went to the store, I would see quite a few of us gathered around the book table, going through the items, even breaking our backs and starting to read.

Maybe you’d even buy one of these books and, after paying for your order, continue reading with a hot dog and soda in hand.

John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”

Twitter @biblioracle

Biblioracle Book Recommendations

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.

1. “Content” by Anne Michaels
2. “The Child and the River” by Henri Bosco
3. “Here after: a memoir” by Amy Lin
4. “The Guardian” by Ron Rash
5. “The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime and Dangerous Obsession” by Michael Finkel

—Jill L., Naperville

I think “The Italian Teacher” by Tom Rachman, a sort of father/son story, a sort of story about art, has a good mix that Jill will enjoy.

1. “How to say Babylon” by Safiya Sinclair
2. “Everything sad is wrong” by Daniel Nayeri
3. “Shark Heart” by Emily Habeck
4. “The world was playing chess” by Robert Dugoni
5. “Small mercies” by Dennis Lehane

— Sue A., Hawthorn Wood

Some variety in this list, which makes me think I have a lot of leeway with my choice, so I’m just choosing a book with a mix of mystery and emotional impact that I think will work for any great reader: “The Boys” by Katie Hafner

1. “As I was dying” by William Faulkner
2. “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller
3. “White noise” by Don DeLillo
4. “Knife” by Salman Rushdie
5. “Pale Fire” by Vladimir Nabokov

—James P., Chicago

So for most books that are a little older and challenging books, I lean into that and defer to Flannery O’Connor’s powerful work on Southern Gothic, “Wise Blood.”

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