Most booksellers tend to be margin managers.
That is, they are concerned primarily with those financial variables that appear on the income, or profit and loss, statement. As a result, improvement efforts are usually focused on better expense management, pricing, and buying strategies. Certainly, efforts to improve each of these areas are warranted and are critical for bookseller success. In other words, other things being equal, the more times a bookseller can put its dollars through this cycle during a period, the greater will be the profit spin-off. For example, if a store increases overall gross margins by 1 or 2 percent of sales, the bottom line ramifications are fairly clear.