As I begin to grasp how much the book business is changing and contemplating how fast the change will come about, I’ve been pondering the future of Jackson’s local market, wondering what our book selling faceplate will become.

Lemuria in Highland Village, 1986

After 35 years and three locations all inside Jackson’s city limits, I’ve seen a lot of change. The Jackson malls of Northpark and Metrocenter had at one time five bookstores between them. Today neither of them has a bookstore. The big stores came to Jackson in the 90s–Books-a-Million across the street and Barnes and Noble on County Line–both of them very close to Lemuria. The 2000s were marked by a shift into the Jackson Metro area with Borders and Barnes & Nobles on the move. Metro area book selling has boomed while the local Jackson market has been drained.

Increased competition can be good for our desire to enhance business quality and performance. However, product shifting and an overall shrinking market make it difficult for customer growth in terms of increasing satisfaction.

We know we are in the midst of an intense change. We look into our crystal ball as we try to predict how all this change will play out for Jackson book buyers and Lemuria’s solid book readers.

Here are some questions we are asking ourselves:

1. Will Borders close or restructure itself into a new business model, de-emphasizing books as their main product and thus discouraging book browsing?

2. Will Barnes & Noble use all their square footage to build a great physical inventory and swamp their competition? Or will they diversify into marketing e-reading so strongly that they emphasize more department store type merchandise?

3. Will B & N and Borders come together to become a new dinosaur, merging into a new entity?

4. How many more nonbook items can Books-a-Million add to their square-footage? I’m sure some but how much more value will they add to their physical book inventory? Will Books-a-Million move outside Jackson and into the metro area?

As answers unfold to our questions, we will begin to decipher how our Lemuria will be altered. For 35 years we have been a Jackson institution, one for which I am proud and I hope my efforts represent my pride and desire for enhanced reading quality. For real book lovers, we are challenging ourselves to improve our service to you. Hard times are ahead and hard decisions will be made.

As we progress to Spring, we hope to share with you our interpretations of this ‘Big Swoop” of change. Our hope is for Lemuria to emerge from its challenges as a stronger institution for Jackson, a bookstore you can still be proud to bring “out-of-towners” to browse and enjoy, maybe in the future more than ever.

The Bookstore Key Series on Changes in the Book Industry

Finding “Deep Time” in a Bookstore (March 8th) Reading The New Rules of Retail by Lewis & Dart (March 3) The Future Price of the Physical Book (Feb 18) Borders Declares Bankruptcy (Feb 16) How Great Things Happen at Lemuria (Feb 8th) The Jackson Area Book Market (Jan 25) What’s in Store for Local Bookselling Markets? (Jan 18) Selling Books Is a People Business (Jan 14) A Shift in Southern Bookselling? (Jan 13) The Changing Book Industry (Jan 11)

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