How Malls Have Changed Bookstores : High Cost of Space Forces Owners to Cut Inventory, Expand Offerings of Best Sellers, Scale Back Service

Strolling through the Glendale Galleria on a weekday afternoon, Janet Prince was in the mood for a new novel to pass the time.

So she dropped by the B. Dalton Bookseller shop and walked out a few minutes later with a paperback copy of the James Michener novel “Texas.”

“I generally pick up a book when I go shopping,” said Prince, a resident of Calgary, Canada, who was staying with friends in Los Angeles, as she headed out into the 265-store mall.

Prince’s routine is common. For many consumers, buying a book is an impulse that comes during that familiar trek between department stores at opposite ends of the mall. The bookstore may have become a standard mall feature, but it has undergone dramatic changes to survive in the mall environment.

The mall’s high rents and large crowds dictate that bookstores must feature self service and fast-moving best sellers. The B. Dalton and Waldenbooks stores found in nearly every major mall are designed with this in mind.

Changing Image

Although many say it’s important for bookstores to be located in malls, these same shops have also been derided for lacking depth and emphasizing profitable and popular books at the expense of serious literature. Independent booksellers, which have traditionally carried a wider variety of books than chain operations, claim they have been locked out of malls. Ironically, some national chains are looking outside malls for future growth.

“Bookstores used to be fairly elite and intimidating places,” said Edward A. Morrow Jr., president of the New York-based American Booksellers Assn. “In effect, the malls have changed the image of the bookstore. There are no doors. You can wander in. It’s just part of the mall.”

The ability of the suburban shopping mall to provide throngs of potential customers year-round has proven irresistible to many retailers, including booksellers. More than 70% of B. Dalton’s 750 stores are in malls. And about 85% of Waldenbooks, the nation’s largest chain with about 1,200 stores, are in malls.

Developers recognize the appeal of bookstores. “If you are out shopping with your wife and you’re not interested in walking around, you might go into a bookstore and browse,” said Douglas L. Stitzel, a real estate developer based in San Francisco. “It will allow late-night shopping, like a record store. On a Saturday night, you won’t find a high-fashion apparel store doing a lot of business. But you might go into a bookstore.”

“Virtually all of our enclosed malls have one bookstore and many have more than one,” said Dana Anderson, executive vice president of Macerich Co., California’s second-largest owner and operator of shopping centers. “Of course, it is the type of merchandise that people will buy on impulse. They will go to the mall for some other purpose and end up buying a book. That’s why you’ll see the top 20 sellers highlighted at the front of the store.”

“They want to nab the mall walkers,” said Maureen J. O’Brien, associate editor of Publishers Weekly. “They are bright, big, roomy. They are not your typical, cute, quaint bookstore. They want you in and out. They were definitely created for that whole (mall) market. They are not all that literary.”

Less Shelf Space for Books

With mall rents ranging from $20 to $40 a square foot, a bookstore is geared to keeping costs low and profits high. That’s why some stores concentrate on carrying fast-moving best sellers instead of critically acclaimed but slow-moving titles. “They have helped to create the mass market hard-cover book,” said Morrow. “I don’t think that would have been possible without bookstores in malls.”

Stores are also devoting more space to calendars, computer software, tapes and gifts, all of which usually carry a wider profit margin than books. “In a sense, it’s forcing books off the shelves,” said Morrow. “That’s unfortunate.”

The push for best sellers makes the inventory at the major chains look alike, say industry executives. Stitzel, a book collector who prefers independent bookstores himself, says the book chains and their mall outlets “have so sterilized the industry that they are not bookstores anymore. If I put you in a chain store in Cincinnati and one in Los Angeles, you couldn’t tell me what city you were in. The stores are exactly alike.”

So the chain stores make efforts to set themselves apart using other methods.

Waldenbooks, for example, creates book displays and promotions around themes--such as child care or AIDS--that rotate every three weeks. The chain, which is owned by K mart Corp., also sponsors book clubs by genre, such as romance or works dealing with the elderly, and offers discounts and a bimonthly newsletter. “That’s how we try to build customer loyalty,” said Dara Tyson, a Waldenbooks spokeswoman.

Some independent store owners say they have been kept out of malls because the developers prefer dealing with the major chains, which bring a proven formula to the mall.

“We have been in a few of them and we’re pushed out by the chains,” said Lewis Lengfeld, president of Books Inc., which operates Hunter’s Books. “The malls are owned by large operators who have malls all over the place. They would rather deal with one chain than with 20 or 30 book stores.”

Popularity Rules

“There is some truth to that,” says Anderson of malls’ penchant for chains. “They are motivated to find the best merchant that the public likes.”

Many have also said that chains are willing to occupy space in a less popular mall to win a spot in a more popular complex. Jerry Silverman, vice president of real estate for Waldenbooks, says that is true, but only in a few cases.

More important, Silverman adds, is that the chain’s financial strength make it more attractive than an independent store. “The chains are more ready to pay the rent required,” he said. “The independents, God love them, many times do not have the financial wherewithal. It’s all based on the ability to make a profit.”

In fact, many in the industry say it would be financially backbreaking for many independents, whose in-depth inventories require large amounts of space, to locate in high-rent malls. Furthermore, many would not be willing to make the changes, such as limiting the number of titles, needed to make it in a mall.

“There are a lot of booksellers who would prefer not to be in the mall,” said Morrow, whose bookshop in Vermont is in a street storefront. “They need a lot of square footage to put up the shelving. The best bookstores in the country are not in malls because of the finances involved.”

The difference between a traditional bookstore and its suburban sister can be clearly seen at two outlets run by Vroman’s Books & Stationery of Pasadena.

Founded in 1894, Vroman’s store on Colorado Boulevard sprawls over two floors and 20,000 square feet. The typical Waldenbooks, in contrast, is only about 2,500 square feet. Vroman’s carries 50,000 titles on a wide variety of subjects, from poetry and classic fiction located near the front door to Westerns in large print shelved in the back.

Less than 10 miles east in Arcadia, Vroman’s opened a mall outlet 10 years ago in the Santa Anita Fashion Park. The store is a quarter of the size of Vroman’s Colorado Boulevard store and carries less than half as many titles.

2 Approaches for Same Store

Most of the front portion of the mall store is devoted to greeting cards, gifts and magazines. Displays near the entrance promote Valentine’s Day gifts--teddy bears and coffee mugs--and popular paperbacks.

“We carry different products; it’s a different size and it’s a different clientele,” said Vroman’s general manager Ed Fitzpatrick. “We don’t carry as many products in as much depth,” he said of the mall store.

“You’re not carrying over many books that don’t sell very quickly,” Fitzpatrick added. “Space is at a premium.”

Despite the popularity of mall sites, the number of new malls opening is declining as the market becomes saturated, industry experts say. That poses a problem for book chains looking to expand.

Waldenbooks thinks it might have an answer. A new type of Waldenbooks stores--Waldenbooks and More--that stand alone or are located in strip shopping centers. The stores are three times as large as their mall brethren and carry a wider selection of titles, say company officials.

“As mall development slows and we expand the stores, we are trying to develop stores as a destination shopping place,” said Tyson at Waldenbooks. Ironically, that means somewhat of a return to the traditional bookstore format.