Costco has 119 million paid members in the United States and is a destination to stock up on groceries and other bulk items. The company also sells books in many of their stores, which is a good side hustle. The company has just discontinued selling books in Hawaii and Alaska, due to the logistics of sending books that far and declining sales in those markets. It also had to do with book returns, back to the publisher, since they needed to be sent by plane or boat, instead of just a truck.
There are seven warehouses in various Hawaiian islands and four in Alaska. The company has been selling books in these markets for 30 years. The book display units have all been disassembled and there are now Halloween candy, gift cards and even plastic Christmas trees. The news on the discontinuation of hardcovers and paperbacks in these two markets was made by Costco media buyer Alexandria Kanenwisher in a letter to book distributors.
You be thinking to yourself, there are a bunch of other bookstores on the islands and Alaska and this is true. However big warehouse stores like Costco attracted customers who ordinarily might never set foot in a traditional book store. Dawn Sakamoto Paiva of Watermark publishing said she says people who purchase books at Costco “tend to be casual book buyers,” readers whom local publishers might not reach otherwise. “For these people, going to a bookstore is not part of their regular routine.”
People who love reading books and want to buy them in a retail setting have precious few options available. Barnes and Noble is the only big bookstore left. Borders with six big bookstores in Hawaii, and 3 in Alaska went out of business in 2011. The now defunct Waldenbooks, a subsidiary of Borders, is also gone. It once had 14 stores statewide, one in almost every shopping center. However, there are thousands of indie bookstores in both states.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
