There’s been some big Costco-related news lately.
One bit was an announcement that the warehouse retailer has no intention of increasing the price of its hot dog and soda combo above the $1.50 mark, where it’s been since the 1980s.
Fantastic news. Good hot dog and a great bargain.
The other news is not as good. Costco is going to stop stocking books year-round, instead focusing their bookselling efforts exclusively during the holiday buying season.
Full disclosure, while I was once something of a Costco devotee, my main reason for visiting now is that excellent hot dog and soda deal.
Even though I’ve been an indie-store-first book buyer for pretty much my entire book purchasing life, the giant flat of books in Costco got me just about every time, as I’d see something I’d been thinking about reading and toss it in the cart with my decade’s supply of Advil and 30-bottle variety pack of Sam Adams beer.
As one of the relatively few large retailers that made books an attractive impulse purchase, Costco has played a vital niche in the overall bookselling ecosystem.
According to reporting in The New York Times, Costco is retreating from that niche because of the physical labor needed to stock books, which must be stacked by hand, rather than rolled out on pallets like other Costco merchandise. The weekly release of new books also required frequent shifting of the stock as books that hadn’t been sold must be repackaged and returned to publishers.
Dating back to a Depression-era practice, unlike most other retail products, books are essentially rented by stores that are charged a wholesale price and then receive the full retail payment when a book is sold. Rather than having to commit to stocking a bunch of books that might not sell, retailers can return unsold books for a credit equivalent to that wholesale amount. Even with the relatively limited number of titles Costco stocked, this could prove time-consuming particularly if you’re talking about tens or hundreds of thousands of books sprinkled across the Costco universe.
Costco is not a hugely significant channel for sales overall, but it is believed to be an avenue where occasional book buyers who are less likely to visit a bookstore acquire their books. With Costco retreating, for all practical purposes, Target is the only general merchandise retailer with a significant commitment to stocking and selling books.
During the pandemic years, publishers experienced robust sales, but those gains have gradually been shed, and here we have another potential blow to the bottom line. As a dedicated book person, I don’t like seeing places where books are bought disappear.
I won’t kid myself that a mass uprising of Costco shoppers may reverse this decision. But I have to believe the already spartan atmosphere of the Costco stores will be further diminished by the absence of books. Every time I would go to the store, I’d see a good number of us gathered around the book table, perusing the wares, even cracking a spine and starting to read.
Maybe you’d even buy one of those books, and after checkout, keep 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.”
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “Held” by Anne Michaels
2. “The Child and The River” by Henri Bosco
3. “Here After: A Memoir” by Amy Lin
4. “The Caretaker” by Ron Rash
5. “The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession” by Michael Finkel
— Jill L., Naperville
I think Tom Rachman’s “The Italian Teacher,” sort of a father/son story, sort of a story about art, has a good mix that will appeal to Jill.
1. “How To Say Babylon” by Safiya Sinclair
2. “Everything Sad Is Untrue” by Daniel Nayeri
3. “Shark Heart” by Emily Habeck
4. “The World Played Chess” by Robert Dugoni
5. “Small Mercies” by Dennis Lehane
— Sue A., Hawthorn Woods
Some variety in this list, which makes me think I have a lot of latitude for my pick, so I’m just going with a book with a mix of mystery and emotional impact that I think will work for any wide reader: “The Boys” by Katie Hafner
1. “As I Lay 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
Mostly somewhat older books, and challenging books, so I’m leaning into that and going with Flannery O’Connor’s powerful work of Southern Gothic, “Wise Blood.”
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.
