Costco plans to stop selling books on a regular basis, largely because of how much labor it requires, four unidentified publishing executives told The New York Times.
The warehouse giant will stop stocking books regularly from January, they said. Instead, Costco will sell books between September and December for the holidays, as well as potentially selling some books sporadically at other times of the year, the executives said.
Costco did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside regular US working hours.
The executives told The Times that the decision was mainly down to staffing demands. Stocking books requires large amounts of labor as they have to be laid out manually by workers rather than rolled out on a pallet and replaced frequently, they said.
The Times reported that Costco had already stopped sales of books in some areas including Alaska and Hawaii.
Reddit users have lamented the decision, with many arguing that Costco should at least continue selling children’s books.
“Stopping selling kids’ books would be like canceling the hot dog in the food court,” one Reddit user commented.
Sales of books at non-bookstores like Costco are largely impulse purchases, with shoppers going to their local warehouse to stock up on groceries and perhaps slipping a book that caught their eye into their account. As The Times pointed out, not all of these sales will be transferred over to other retailers.
US sales of print books dropped 3% in 2023 compared to the prior year, with the biggest decline in children’s books, according to market research company Circana. This included fewer sales of children’s fantasy, magic, and humor books, as well as non-fiction. But adult fiction sales grew, led by fantasy, romance, coming-of-age, and historical fiction books, Circana said.
BookTok has been credited with boosting print book sales in an age of Kindles and other e-readers. Publisher Bloomsbury reported record sales in the year to February 29, which it credited largely to fantasy author Sarah J. Maas, whose series “A Court of Thorns and Roses” has become a BookTok darling.
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