The Booksheller

We don't subscribe to the industry rag but one of our friendly neighborhood reps occasionally brings us a bunch of back issues to see what we're missing.

This is from the 9 November issue:

'St Pancras Foyles arrives late

...Once the £500,000 refit is completed, the 3,500 square foot store will stock some 6,500 titles.'

Hmm. 6,500 titles in a 3,500 square foot shop. That's not much. Based on C&P's capacity which as any visitor would know isn't exactly overburdened with stock that would probably mean they would have room to stock 4 copies of every title. Which would indicate, what with todays 24 hour turnaround on ordering, that they are expecting to sell 3 copies of every book, every day. That's impressive. In fact, let's do some sums.

6500 times 4... carry the 1... times by... erm... divided by.........

Bloody hell! That's a stock turn of just over 273! Well done Foyles! Most of us are happy with 5 and a bit!

Or maybe the Bookseller magazine just got the wrong end of the stick.

Now, where's that subscription form again...

(Disclaimer: This is not a moan at Foyles! They just happen to have been mis-somethinged. Unless they really are only having 6500 titles in 3500 square feet in which case it's going to be dead roomy. Probably loads of sofas to stretch out on. Nice.)