Tracking 20 Years of Bookstore Chains via PW
The bookstore chain landscape has undergone seismic shifts over the past 20 years and will enter the fall with approximately 1,100 fewer stores than dotted the country in 1991. Just as it is today, Barnes & Noble was the country’s largest bookstore chain 20 years ago, closely trailed by Waldenbooks. Unlike today, though, there were a number of regional chains that tried to compete with the powerhouses.
The largest regional was Crown Books, which at its height had sales of $305 million. Founded by Robert Haft in 1977, Crown closed in 2001 after two trips to Chapter 11 and much turmoil within the Haft family. Crown clustered its stores in major cities around the country and just before it closed its doors for the final time, sold 19 outlets in metropolitan Chicago and Washington, D.C., to Books-A-Million. At present, BAM has one store in Chicago and nine in the greater Washington area. Now the de facto second largest chain by revenue, Books-A-Million was known as Bookland in 1991 when it was the sixth largest chain and its outlets operated under the Books-A-Million, Gateway, and Bookland names.
Chicago was also home to Kroch’s & Brentano’s, an area institution that at its peak had 22 bookstores in the region, but closed in 1995 a victim of intense superstore competition in the Windy City.
Read more at PW:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/48473-tracking-20-years-of-bookstore-chains.html
