would not be attributed. No sales director would wish to fall out with what has become one of his most important customers. And there is always the fear – not entirely groundless, as we shall see – that Amazon might use its ability to remove books from its site or disable the ‘buy’ button as a weapon in the struggle to improve its terms of trade. The fact that Amazon is a large and growing customer for most publishers, that it is much bigger than any other online retailer and that it is also a very visible site, in the sense that many readers will look for books on Amazon and many authors will go to Amazon to check the availability of their own books, has put Amazon in a strong negotiating position. It could be very damaging for a publisher if its books were no longer listed on Amazon, or if they were listed but not available for purchase: being available on Amazon has increasingly become the litmus test of availability per se.
The growing role of mass merchandisers
Bookstores, whether independents or chains, were never the only outlets for books: as noted earlier, they were also commonly sold in non-specialist retail outlets like drugstores and department stores. In the 1980s and 1990s, publishers found new outlets for books in the expanding chains of large discount stores, like Wal-Mart, Kmart and Target, and in the emergence of the warehouse stores – the so-called Price Clubs. Sam Walton opened his first Wal-Mart Discount Store in Arkansas in 1962; within five years it had become a chain with 24 discount stores across the state. From the 1970s on, Wal-Mart expanded its chain, first by opening stores in neighbouring states and then by expanding across the US and overseas. By 2005 Wal-Mart had 3,800 stores in the US and 2,800 elsewhere. Wal-Mart had become the largest retailer in the United States, Canada and Mexico; it had also become the second largest grocer in Britain, thanks to its acquisition of Asda in 1999 for $10 billion.21
Wal-Mart opened its first warehouse club, called Sam’s Club (after Sam Walton), in Midwest City, Oklahoma, in 1983, but the origin of the warehouse store is usually attributed to Sol Price, an attorney from San Diego. Having inherited a vacant warehouse in the early 1950s, Price encouraged a number of wholesalers to fill it with an assortment of goods ranging from jewellery and furniture to alcohol, which was sold at wholesale prices to a membership which consisted of government employees. The business, which he launched in 1954 under the name of FedMart, was a success, and when Price sold it in 1975 it had grown into a chain of 45 stores. Building on the success of FedMart, Sol Price and his son Robert founded the first Price Club store on the outskirts of San Diego in 1976. The retail concept was simple: sell a broad range of goods in high volume and at low prices, usually at around 10 per cent mark-up from the wholesale price. In order to maintain low prices, overhead costs were kept to a minimum: products were stocked on pallets or high shelves on the warehouse floor, the warehouses themselves were located on cheap industrial land on the outskirts of cities and staffing was minimal. Restricting the membership reduced the risk of bad cheques and shoplifting, and modest membership fees helped cover the overhead costs. After an initial disappointing year, the Prices broadened the membership to include employees of hospitals, financial institutions and utilities, and this proved sufficient to enable the business to grow. By the mid-1980s, the Prices had opened 20 warehouses, most of which were in California, and the company was generating profits of $45 million on sales of $1.9 billion.
The success of Price Club spawned many imitators, including Costco Wholesale Club, Sam’s and BJ’s. Costco was co-founded by James Sinegal, who had worked with Sol Price at FedMart and the Price Company before leaving to form Costco with Jeffrey Brotman in 1983. Costco was based on principles very similar to the Price Club, and from its original base in Seattle it quickly became a major competitor. Sam’s Wholesale Club was established by Wal-Mart in 1983 and grew rapidly; by 1993 Sam’s had pulled ahead of Price Club and become the largest wholesale club in the US, with 434 stores and nearly half the market. Partly as a response to the threat from Sam’s, the Prices decided to merge with Costco, which then ranked third among the wholesale clubs in terms of overall revenue. The new company, PriceCostco, proved to be an unstable union; Robert Price left the company in 1994, and in 1997 it changed its name to Costco Wholesale. Costco and Sam’s are now the leading wholesale clubs and are of roughly similar size; with a turnover of $64.4 billion in 2007, Costco has the highest sales volume, though Sam’s, with 713 stores, has more retail outlets.
The rise of the mass merchandisers, including Wal-Mart, Kmart, Target and the wholesale clubs like Price Club, Sam’s, BJ’s and Costco, created a wide range of new retail outlets where books could be sold. These were retail venues that reached deep into the community and had a high level of throughput in terms of shopping traffic: it is estimated that 90 per cent of Americans live within 15 minutes of a Wal-Mart store, and each year 93 per cent of American households shop at least once at Wal-Mart.22 From roughly the mid-1990s on, these mass-merchandising chains became increasingly important retail outlets for certain kinds of books – for bestsellers above all, and especially for bestselling commercial fiction by brand-name authors, selling initially in hardcover and subsequently in mass-market paperback. ‘They carry very few books,’ explained one sales analyst at a large publishing firm, ‘but on the books they carry, they sell a lot.’
Table 2 shows the market share of the major US retailers for the sales of two bestselling novels by a leading commercial fiction writer. One book was published in 2005 and the other in 2008; the figures are based on sales of the hardcover edition during the first three weeks after publication. While the market shares for each account vary somewhat from one book to the next, the overall pattern is clear: Costco is the single largest account, with a 21 per cent market share for the 2005 book and 18.7 per cent for the 2008 book; Wal-Mart and Sam’s (which is owned by Wal-Mart) are among the next most important accounts, with market shares of 15.8 and 18.2 per cent in the case of Wal-Mart and 17 and 11 per cent in the case of Sam’s. Taken together, the mass merchandisers (including Target) account for over half of the sales of these books during the first three weeks of sale – 61.3 per cent in 2005 and 53.8 per cent in 2008. Barnes & Noble’s market share was 13 per cent in 2005 and 15 per cent in 2008, while Borders had 8 and 11 per cent. Taken together, the book superstore chains accounted for roughly a quarter of the sales (21 per cent in 2005 and 26 per cent in 2008). Amazon’s share grew from 2.9 per cent in 2005 to 5.4 per cent in 2008. These seven accounts – four of the key mass merchandisers, the two book superstore chains and Amazon – accounted for 85 per cent of the sales of these bestselling hardcover books during the first three weeks after publication. All remaining outlets – including the remaining chains such as Books-A-Million and all the independent bookstores taken together – accounted for only 15 per cent of sales.
Table 2 Market share of major accounts for two commercial bestsellers
Hardcover sales for the first three weeks after publication.
| Market share (%) | ||
|---|---|---|
| 2005 novel | 2008 novel | |
| Barnes & Noble | 13 | 15 |
| Borders | 8 | 11 |
| Costco | 21 | 18.7 |
| Wal-Mart | 15.8 | 18.2 |
| Sam’s | 17 | 11 |
| Target | 7.5 | 5.9 |
