Goodwill Opens San Diego Book Store: Innovative or Foolish?

With the opening of a new bookstore in San Diego (video.nbcsandiego.com/player/), Goodwill Industries is targeting itself to compete directly with independent booksellers and may be squeezing the already competitive market of independent booksellers even more. Although Goodwill spokespeople make a good point by noting that books were often lost in the mass of goods found in a typical Goodwill store, this move is still a risky one for the company and its image. Bookselling is a specialized business, often taking sellers time and energy to get up to speed. I know; I'm an independent bookseller.

As someone who primarily sells rare books, I don't feel threatened by Goodwill's move to open a bookstore in a University City strip mall. The books are reasonably priced, from three to eight dollars each and are primarily mass market books, ranging from current bestsellers to classic fiction and nonfiction, according to a news report from NBC in San Diego. They aren't competing directly with me but they are competing with plenty of other sellers, some of whom are having a tough go of it already. By doing this, they may actually be creating new clients for Goodwill services by putting booksellers out of business. The last thing longtime sellers need is another group of bookstores competing with them, offering books at prices way below what they can afford because the vast majority of Goodwill's books are donated to them, so they can set prices lower than the average bookstore, way lower.

Members of the bookselling community also wonder if Goodwill is moving away from providing goods to its former target clientele, which used to consist of struggling families. By taking books out of Goodwill stores, the company is essentially limiting access to these books only to those people who are aware of the bookstore and/or those able to afford the books, which no longer sell for a few cents on the dollar.