Barnes & Noble vs. Independent Booksellers: A look at the closing down of independent booksellers as Barnes & Noble takes over Manhattan and Shakespeare & Co. shutters its doors in response

The real threat to independents comes from the stacks of best-sellers heaped in the front of every superstore. While publishers are willing to pay any bookstore for favorable placement, in practice the money goes overwhelmingly to chains. Each book in prominently positioned dump-bins can net a chain $120,000 a year, according to a New York Times article earlier this year. In Barnes & Noble’s case, publishers can shell our another $150,000 for inclusion in the “Discover Great New Writers” series, which includes front-window placement in all superstores for two or thee months and a review of the book in the chain’s in-house journal. The program purports to offer an introduction to the “best books being published [sic] this summer” and “some of the finest writers on todays’ lterary [sic] scene.”