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A blog wherein a literary agent will sometimes discuss his business, sometimes discuss the movies he sees, the tennis he watches, or the world around him. In which he will often wish he could say more, but will be obliged by business necessity and basic politeness and simple civility to hold his tongue. Rankings are done on a scale of one to five Slithy Toads, where a 0 is a complete waste of time, a 2 is a completely innocuous way to spend your time, and a 4 is intended as a geas compelling you to make the time.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

It Just Keeps Getting Better & Better

For those people who like to slam Bookscan for tracking "only" 70 or 75% of the market, I have some bad news.

Come the New Year, they've added BJ's Wholesale Club, Meijer, and the Paradies Shops to their reporting outlets.

BJ's I think most people are at least familiar with, but if not, they're the 3rd biggest warehouse club after Costco and Sam's, and they've certainly been adding more and more NYC outlets in recent years, though none real convenient for me.

Meijer, I have fond memories of from my college days in Ann Arbor. Back then they were Meijer's Thrifty Acres, which was and still is an early version of a Walmart Supercenter with groceries and hard goods all under one roof. I never shopped at one when I was in college because they were on the outskirts of town, but the name still brings fond memories. I did pop in to one outside of Indianapolis to see what the book department was like, and in the same power center as a B&N. So the chain is still around, still offering some regional competition to the Walmart behemoth.

And Paradies, I believe they are a competitor to Hudson News (which came on board at the start of 2009) in the airport retail market.

Know, Bookscan is still not perfect. It still doesn't get #s from Walmart, which guards them zealously. It doesn't cover a lot of non-traditional outlets, so as an example a book one of my clients once did that sold 90% of its copies in Motherhood Maternity would still be invisible to the Bookscan universe. But all that being said, these additions add some depth and breadth to the sales that are being tracked in 2010.

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