Ever Wondered How Many...?

Ever wondered how many book and magazine titles a store carries? According to a recent Wall Street Journal article on the new Borders concept stores, the standard Borders superstore will now stock about 85,000 to 90,000 titles. They used to stock more, but now they are stocking fewer books and placing more of them face-out. To quote Shelf Awareness:

...the new approach has led to sales increases "in the double digits" and has led to the removal of 5%-10% of the average store's titles--many of which sell only one copy a year in each store.

...the change will be apparent in most Borders stores within six weeks and be most noticeable in categories like children's, food, cooking, travel, art and photography but less so in fiction.

...At a typical Borders superstore, the reduction of inventory will be between 4,675 and 9,350 titles out of about 93,500.

...The average 25,000 square-foot Barnes & Noble superstore stocks approximately 125,000 to 150,000 book titles...

According to New York Post article by Keith J. Kelly,

Retail behemoth Wal-Mart is tossing more than 1,000 magazines from the racks in its stores... Most of the magazines are small, and more than a few of the victims are titles that have long since stopped publishing... However, virtually no major publisher was spared. Wal-Mart....is believed to be responsible for generating more than 20 percent of all retail magazine sales in the US. ....Wal-Mart [has] 4,000 stores.

It seems like the trend right now is to stock fewer titles, but to give those titles better placement.