Thought you might be interested, I went into Whitcoulls Botany branch this morning. With the Whitcoulls List Top 100 there were 17 books out of stock out with a sign in each space saying “This book is so popular it has sold out”.
Similarly with 3 of the Top 5 Thrillers, 4 of 5 the top 5 Chic Lit and 2 of the top 5 Fiction.
That’s 26 of the best-selling books unavailable out of 115 (22.5%!). Three whole gondolas were filled up with remainders (plus other ends and tables etc) and the fiction shelves appear to have a lot of ‘fillers’ to avoid looking empty – for example there were 14 copies of Marian Keyes Watermelon a backlist paperback published in 1996.
Botany Whitcoulls: Even worse upstairs in the children's section with rows of Eragon, Harry Potter and other fillers. The upstairs is now basically a toy shop that stocks books.
ReplyDeleteThey've never [as in the last 10 yrs] been fully committed booksellers - but I wonder what response you would get if you attempted to purchase those same titles through their online site?
ReplyDeleteBookbrainz