Tower Records Parties Like It's 1999: Opens Online Bookstore

by Edward Nawotka, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 3/30/2006

Just a few weeks after Prince launched his new record 3121 with a surprise midnight show at a Tower Records outlet in West Hollywood, the beleaguered retail chain took a cue from the aging legend and traveled back to the late 90s, launching a new online bookstore.

Baker & Taylor is supplying fulfillment, data and software for the store, located at http://www.tower.com/books The site is initially offering a choice of more than 600,000 titles and a 40% discount on bestsellers.

Books have been an on again/off again feature at Tower Records stores. Some locations featured generous selections of books, including a broad range of fiction. Now, most stores offer at most a modest choice of pop culture titles. Two substantial Tower "bookstores" remain attached to Tower Records outlets in the retailer's hometown of Sacramento, Calif.

Spokesperson Lisa Amore said "We've gone through ebbs and flows with how many books we stock in our stores." Adding, "In our mind books still fall under the category of entertainment, so adding them online seems like a natural progression--just like the way we've added video games and devices for sale."

Now comprising 89 stores in the U.S. and 144 international licensed locations, Tower has been up for sale since February. It is the second time the chain has sought a buyer. In 2004, failure to find a buyer forced the company into a brief, 35 day-long Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

At the height of the chain's popularity in the early 1990s, annual sales topped $1 billion per year. Since then, the company's fortunes have waxed and waned. Annual revenues are now estimated to be less than half that sum. Amore offered "no comment" to questions about the possible sale. Her only reply was, "Tower is not going to go out of business, if that is what you're asking."