Visited the Strand in NYC last month and their fiction section felt kinda dead

I was hyped to browse their new releases but half the shelves were just stacked with the same 3 bestsellers over and over. Has anyone else noticed bookstores leaning harder into curated picks instead of actually stocking variety?

2 comments

2 Comments

briannguyen2h ago

Well I actually see it a little differently. A smaller curated selection can sometimes be a good thing if it helps people find books they might not normally pick up. I remember walking into a big chain store years ago and feeling overwhelmed by the endless rows. You could stand there for twenty minutes and walk out with nothing. At least with a curated section you get someone who has actually read those books and can point you in the right direction. Now if they are just stacking fifty copies of the same bestseller that is a different problem. But I think the shift toward curation is more about helping people make a choice than it is about limiting variety.

charlie_stone721d ago

My buddy Dave went to the Strand last month and said the same thing. He grabbed some Raymond Chandler collection off a bottom shelf buried under like 50 copies of the same Colleen Hoover book lol.