Home Depot Abandons Bookselling

Posted on March 6, 2012

Home Depot has announced that it will stop selling books. Publisher's Weekly reports that Home Depot sent a letter to major publishers this past Friday making the announcement. PW says the letter was signed by associate merchant Sarah Moffat. Moffat said in the letter that the company spent more than a year doing intense analysis of information (presumably sales data) and reading the results of customer surveys, the company decided to discontinue the "book subclass." The space that used to be for books will now be "better optimized." The letter goes on and on about how the decision was not easy, but how the store is busy working on its "front end transformation."

So, to translate: a) Books just aren't selling like they used to; b) Our customers are ignoring the books at the front of the store, so we're replacing the books displays with flashlights and wrenches; and c) we're not big on books anyway -- they are, after all, a "subclass."

Home Depot generally stocks nonfiction and do it yourself titles. PW says publishers are worried that Wal-Mart and Target may also ditch books.