Rambunctious Revival of Books

Big chains put new zip into a fusty trade

Once upon a time book retailing was about as exciting as watching haircuts. Hardcover books were often sold in musty downtown stores by fussy bibliophiles, and many readers turned to paperback racks in the more informal atmosphere of supermarkets or drugstores. Today the bookstore business is in the midst of a rambunctious revival. Highly organized chains with fat financial backing are using aggressive, unsentimental sales and promotion techniques to push into all parts of the country. The chains are cutting into book-club sales and sweeping some small independent stores out of business or forcing them to rely more and more on discounting or specialization.

Largely as a result of their merchandising razzle-dazzle, the chains are inducing people to buy more books than ever. Retail sales rose to $1.6 billion last year for hard and soft covers combined, and this year they are expected to climb 13%, to $1.8 billion. In terms of unit volume, sales this year will reach about 550 million books. Many of the new customers are former book-club members who find shopping in stores more convenient. As a result, hardcover sales by the clubs fell 4.5% last year, though inflation pushed up dollar volume by 7%, to $253 million. Helped by the chains' expansion, stores are springing up, increasing from about 7,300 less than two years ago to almost 9,000 now.

In the forefront of the merchandising blitz are such chains as Waldenbooks, the nation's largest book retailer, owned by Carter Hawley Hale Stores. Begun in 1962, the Walden chain now has 498 shops dotted around the country, mostly in suburban shopping malls. In recent years it has been opening a store a week. B. Dalton, a subsidiary of Dayton Hudson Corp., the department store conglomerate, is the second largest bookseller. Dalton too has been growing at a feverish rate in recent years and has 339 stores in 40 states. Other chains include Doubleday stores, an affiliate of the publishing house, and Brentano's, an affiliate of Macmillan. The chains account for up to half of all hardcover retail sales, and their share of the market grows every month.

These big companies operate with a cold efficiency that astounds the oldtime booksellers, who often take a warm proprietary interest in their wares. Highly computerized Dalton, which carries about 30,000 titles in each shop, assigns every book a number; when the book is sold the number is entered through the cash register into a computer, which produces a weekly report on what every store in the chain has sold. Slow-moving titles are quickly culled. Most chains concentrate almost exclusively on bestsellers--novels, selfhelp, biographies and the like.

Having consolidated their position in the suburbs, the chains are now tackling the big cities. Walden already has three stores in New York City and is planning to open more. Next month Dalton is opening one of the nation's largest bookstores, on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. It will carry 100,000 titles and have ten departments offering 125 categories of books. The religious and health sections will have parquet floors for a feeling of stability. The technology section will be paneled in walnut, and the young readers' section will be colored a bright Star Wars blue and green. A glass elevator will connect the first and second floors.

Competition from the new store is certain to intensify the bruising price war that is already roiling the New York City area, where an estimated one-third of U.S. hardcover books are sold. The discounters commonly cut prices 20% to 35% on bestsellers. The battle has already forced Laurel Book Center, a small chain, out of business. McGraw-Hill at times has posted a barker outside its Manhattan store to attract customers by offering a daily giveaway of technical books. Doubleday has refurbished and expanded its main Fifth Avenue store and is relying more and more on cut-rate leftovers--so-called remainders. Barnes & Noble's huge New York stores have flourished by offering a mountainous selection of remainders, which sell at a fraction of the jacket price. Only venerable Scribner's successfully remains above the battle, carrying thousands of titles its competitors do not stock.

In Chicago, another big book-buying city, Dalton is taking on the long established Kroch's & Brentano's regional chain, competing side by side in two downtown locations and four suburban sites. Kroch's, which has a reputation as a quality bookseller with an interest in the literary field, continues to operate in the old tradition; its sales people, for instance, often phone customers to alert them to new books that they might like. Against this, Dalton offers a plethora of autograph parties featuring such guests as Charlton Heston and former Treasury Secretary William Simon, and some selective discounting. Like many independents, Carl Kroch, the chain's president, insists there will always be a place for the old, full-price shop. Says he: "You can't provide our kind of services on such a large scale. Besides, there's room for everyone. The public is still underexposed to books."

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