This will be a shorty-short article today probably because, while this is an interesting topic, I do not think it’s a lengthy one. But what do I know. I often think I will wrap up at 1,500 words and then ramble on for another 1,000. You’re all very patient with me, honestly. Today’s article is about why I often use Costco availability as shorthand to mean “a really, really successful book.”
I was originally going to title this article “The Costco Connection” but shied away because that’s the name of their monthly mailer and I don’t particularly want to invite Costco’s notice to fall upon me like the Eye of Sauron on an unsuspecting hobbit, although I have nothing but complimentary things to say about Costco. Next I was going to call it “Costco and Woe,” which is my private nickname for Costco trips, owing to how you go into Costco with high hopes and the best intentions but come out with a gallon drum of olive oil, an eighty-pack of industrial-grade paper towels, a chicken bake for dinner, and your wallet $200 lighter. Get it? Costco and woe. Two things that go together naturally. Peanut butter and jelly. Netflix and chill. IKEA and having a difficult conversation about the relationship.
Anyway I landed on Costco and Whoa, the “whoa” is for the amazing opportunity it is for any book to be sold at Costco, and also for getting a great deal on a box of 100 Rice Krispie treats.
Costco isn’t the only warehouse club game in town. I mean, it’s the only one in my town—actually no it’s not. Okay, it’s just the one I belong to. Sam’s Club is the major competitor, and then there are other, smaller warehouse clubs scattered around. When I say “Costco” in this context, I’m talking about these major multinational chains of warehouse club stores.
If you’re unfamiliar, the idea is it’s a giant store out in the suburbs somewhere that sells bulk items—in Costco’s case, often under their own brand name, Kirkland—at discount prices. That’s the warehouse part. The “club” part is you have to pay for a membership to shop there. You pay annually and the idea is you save so much money on bulk necessities at bargain-basement prices that it more than pays for the membership fee. There’s also some kind of dividend; I don’t really understand it but every December my partner has to go up there to the customer service desk and they give him money for some reason.
Costco doesn’t just sell groceries and dry goods, they also sell seasonal stuff like patio furniture in the summer and xmas trees in the winter, electronics, vacation packages, and even coffins. You can buy your coffin at Costco. Like you don’t pick it up off the shelf and put it in your cart but you can order it there. Where else can you get an iPad and a coffin in one trick? This modern goth would like to know. Costco also has an optometrist and a pharmacy.
Life pro tip: You do not need to be a member to use the optometrist for eye exams (although you can’t buy glasses without a membership) or the pharmacy. Those services are open to the public.
And Costco sells books, obviously, or I would not be writing this Shelf Life today.
When writers who intend to publish ask me about self, indie, hybrid, trade, small press, and so on, what’s the ideal publishing path for getting that book out there in the world—I ask them to close their eyes and try to get in touch with their vision for the book’s life out there in the world. I know that sounds a bit woo-woo but what I mean is: When you think of yourself as an author and your manuscript as a published book, what do you picture? What does a published book mean to you?
Do you imagine it available at your local library, perhaps with a waiting list of patrons who want to check it out? Do you envision yourself walking into a Barnes and Noble or a Books-a-Million and finding it on the shelf in the new releases section? Or perhaps on an endcap lovingly curated by an enthusiastic bookseller? Or maybe displayed in the window of your local independent bookstore?
Those are all pretty normal hopes and dreams for our books, right? We want them to be available where readers go looking for books. The reality for many authors is that books will be available for online purchase and may not be stocked in physical stores, but I don’t think that’s what most of us imagine for our books when we dream big.
As long as we’re dreaming big, let’s dream big. How many of us close our eyes, channel all our hopes and dreams for our book, and imagine it in a stack on a table in Costco, sandwiched between the clothing display and the deli? Because that’s about as big as it gets.
Costco isn’t a bookseller, but they do sell books. Friends, they actually sell a whole hecking lot of books. I’ve never worked at a publisher where it wasn’t a huge deal, as in red-letter day and company-wide news, if a title landed a Costco order. One company I worked at, not a small company and with a long history in the business no less, once described a single title’s Costco sale as company-saving. As in, this recession had us in a pickle but luckily we sold a title to Costco and now we’re okay. That’s how big a deal it is.
This is why I always drag my partner by the book table at Costco when we’re there, so I can see what’s on it, even though I have no intention of buying. The other day they had a whole stack of Tana French’s The Searcher (I’ll come back to this later). I don’t pay as much attention to the nonfiction books but I usually remember which fiction authors I see there. I always want to know what types of novels Costco is stocking.
The reason why it’s a big deal to get your book sold at Costco is, I imagine, probably the same reason why it’s a big deal to get your breakfast cereal or your peanut butter sold at Costco. Costco isn’t like the regular grocery store. At the regular grocery store, if you want to buy peanut butter, you go to the peanut butter aisle and you have every brand and type and size jar of peanut butter to choose from. Chunky or smooth? With or without chocolate? Jif or Skippy? Or store brand? Do you need 15 ounces or 28 or 40? Or maybe a four pack of individual peanut butter servings to go in your kid’s lunchbox?
Not at Costco. At Costco you usually get one choice per type of item. They’ve got Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter, in the 48-ounce jar, in a two pack—and that’s it. They have pallets and pallets of that two pack of Skippy, but that’s the only peanut butter you’ll find anywhere in the store. Breakfast cereal? Sure they have several types of breakfast cereal but there’s no variety; you want Chex? They have peanut butter Chex. Did you want chocolate Chex? Too bad. That’s not what they have. They have a 50-pound sack of peanut butter Chex and you can take it or leave it.
Costco is like if “you get what you get and you don’t get upset” was a store.
Bookstores are like the grocery store. They stock a lot of different books. Like the grocery store, they try to stock what people buy most while still maintaining a variety of different things for people who want to come in and browse and comparison shop. To that end, while they get many different titles, they don’t get a high volume of units of each title. That is, unless they have high preorders or a sure bestseller is on the horizon; then, yes, they will buy in volume when the title is new.
Normally, if you go in a bookstore looking for something that didn’t just launch, you will find one, two, or three copies of that book at most. Let’s say I want to go to the book store and pick up a copy of The Searcher by Tana French. They’ll definitely have it: One copy or a few, on a shelf with one or a few copies of all the other Tana French novels. But The Searcher is two years old now; they’re not going to buy serious stock of that title unless a movie comes out. If someone buys one copy, they’ll replace one copy.
Barnes and Noble and other big-box bookstores buy a handful of copies of many different titles. By the way, that’s each Barnes and Noble (or each location of any big-box bookstore). Bookstores all have their own buyer, for the individual store or for a district. That person decides which titles they’re going to stock on the shelves in the locations that buyer is responsible for. That’s why the Barnes and Noble near you might not have a book in stock but the one 20 miles away has it. They don’t all stock the same stuff. Nationwide bestsellers aside, not every book is equally popular everywhere. Bookstores stock according to what their customers like and buy.
Not Costco. If Costco decides they’re going to stock your title, they’re not going to stock one or two copies. They’re going to stock like a hundred copies. Per store. And decisions for what’s going to be sold at Costco aren’t made on the store-by-store level; they’re made at a regional level. When Costco orders a title they order thousands of units split among hundreds of locations. They do not do anything small. They order a lot of units.
There’s a bit more to it, though. After all, I’ve mentioned before, retailers can return unsold stock of books. They don’t physically return them, but they get their money back. That’s part of why royalties take so long to pay out, by the way—books that are sold aren’t always sold sold. What I mean is, it’s not just about securing that initial Costco order; you also want those units to sell through to customers and not come back to the publisher for a refund.
Most people aren’t going to Costco to buy a book, but then most people aren’t going in there to buy a $12 pair of Gloria Vanderbilt Amanda jeans either—but if you’re there, and your wallet is already out, and you need something to read, well. . . . When a customer browses the book table at Costco, whether they’re just looking or open to buying or actively looking to purchase a book, they have fewer choices than they would have at a bookstore. I’m not literally in a Costco right now but just going from memory, the book display is typically split among:
Classics (nice editions of classic books, like Pride and Prejudice or The Hobbit for example, which you might buy as a gift).
“Frontlist” fiction (I say “frontlist” because some of the books are a year or two old and you wouldn’t think of them as “new releases”)
Narrative nonfiction bestsellers (often biographies, memoirs, and books on current events)
Non-narrative nonfiction (things like cookbooks, gardening books, coffee table books)
Children’s books (a mix of board books, picture books, and activity books)
In any of these categories, you’ll have between 5 and 10 choices. Compare that to the choices you have when you go to a bookstore and wander into the new releases or frontlist fiction sections: dozens or hundreds of choices.
The books that Costco elects to stock are not chosen randomly. They’re chosen either because they’ve already shown an excellent sales track record (eg, already a bestseller) or because there’s good reason to believe they will be hot sellers based on the current political, economic, or social climate. For instance, a company I know sold a book on how to homeschool children into Costco early in the COVID-19 pandemic, and another publisher I worked with once sold an expose on a criminal trial that was major, nationwide news into Costco to coincide with the delivery of the verdict on national television.
Finally, the price is right. Costco gets an excellent price break by buying stock in the thousands instead of the hundreds or tens, and they can pass some of those savings on to their shoppers.
In summary, the books stocked at Costco are:
Not competing with many other titles
Priced lower than other retailers
Selected based on topical popularity or prior selling status
It’s a recipe for serious sales. As they say in retail, “stack them high and watch them fly.”
But listen, being stocked in a Costco is not a dream for the faint of heart. This is a privilege for the biggest sellers. But as long as you’re dreaming you might as well dream big. The next time somebody tells you “I want to walk into a bookstore and find my book on the shelf” tell them “Oh yeah? Well I want to walk into a big-box warehouse club and find my book on a table between the iPads and the coffins.” Then come back and tell me how they reacted.
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