It was widely reported this week that Borders has agreed to accept books from HarperStudio as non-returnable.  For those who don’t know, books sold to almost every bookseller can generally be returned to the Publisher for full credit.  In fact, this has been the norm since the 1930s so this arrangement between Borders is unusual and interesting.  Some thoughts:

The reported discount is pretty deep – 58% to 63% so that in itself is interesting in that it will allow Borders to deeply discount them in the stores if that is what they choose to do.

A discount that deep would normally trigger a deep discount clause in many publishing contracts.  I’ll assume that HarperStudio either has no such clause or has taken this into account in some other way.

The non-returnable nature of the purchases likely means Borders will take less stock to begin with, meaning less copies of a book per store.  Unless, of course, they decide to adopt a strategy where they buy large quantities at discount and hope to “stack ‘em high and watch ‘em fly.”

At any rate it’s it very encouraging to see that a publisher and bookseller are willing to experiment and push the edges of an industry that is in transition and in need of change.

What do you think?

(Image credit Leo Reynolds)

After all, Amazon.com really does it right in so many ways.

Border’s new online storefront will have one benefit that Amazon.com can not offer – retail locations. For me, the killer feature is the convenience of purchasing online, but getting products same day by swinging by a local retail store for pickup.

As Border’s moves to its new face-out shelving strategy, the reduction in inventories may reduce the usefulness of what could be the new site’s best feature.