I’ve enjoyed all the feedback over my past three posts and wanted to share a couple of follow-up items, particularly as I’ve recently returned from a business trip to San Fransisco where I spoke with other industry insiders face to face. Those conversations have made me realize a few other things that seem to be reshaping the landscape. Here are those follow-up thoughts.

The Big Rush Never Came
Everyone saw the spike they were expecting the second Monday of January (1/9/12), but the next week was expected to be bigger and it wasn’t. This was the consensus from the different merchants that I spoke to. Once we can analyze compete data, we can share the stats.

Bankruptcy Flooded the Market
Over the past few months, we saw the closing of Budgetext and the liquidation of some of Nebraska’s inventory and the dissolution of Borders. Is this what pushed average order value down? There’s no way to really tell, but it seems to everyone in the business that surplus inventory was available.

New Editions
Are the publishers beating up the market by shifting publication dates? If a new edition is pending, the used book will lose value. One thing to remember is that if a new edition is pending, it will be 6-18 months before demand for the adoption will really move from the old book to the new book.

I look forward to presenting some average order value numbers later this week as well as looking at the growth of rental and the impact on market share.