Recently over Christmas break, I began reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo book series by Steg Larsson. My mom convinced me to read it so we could go see the movie together. Needless to say we never actually saw the movie because she reads at a much slower pace than myself, but I really enjoyed the series thus far. Earlier today I was out and about in Boone trying to find a copy of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, the third and final book in the trilogy, and I found out that literally every book store around town was sold out of not only this particular book, but the second book in the series as well, The Girl Who Played with Fire. The only book I could find in any store was the original book that just recently was made into a major American motion picture.
I couldn't help but also notice a trend among another popular series that is soon hitting theaters, The Hunger Games. When I was exploring Wal-Mart earlier today, literally half the books in the literary section was the first book in The Hunger Games series. As I was pondering about what to write about in my post, I thought that this particular issue would provide a great modern day example of supply and demand.
When a popular book series hits theaters, I think we can all agree that the demand for whichever book is being put on the big screen is obviously going to dramatically rise, as seen with the two previous examples I talked about. Thus there is obviously going to be a huge increase in the supply as well. However, what I think many book retailers (besides online) have underestimated is the increased demand there is for additional books in these series. Maybe a lot of other people wait to read the next book in a series until right before the movie comes out, but it seems to me that they would at least expect a higher demand for the series in general. My basic point is here that I greatly feel local book retailers highly underestimate the book supply they feel they should carry with the other books in a series. Obviously they will account for some increase in demand, but in this case it has been clearly underestimated. Another point you could argue is that as a book's movie release draws closer, obviously the demand level for that book is going to increase at a higher rate. I think larger retailers understand this, but the local book stores should understand this a little better. If they did, I think they would get a little bit more business instead of having consumers turn to online retailers as an alternative.
An article I found on the Harry Potter series helps me reinforce my point on the demand for book sales around the release of a movie, but I felt some everyday insight might be applicable here as well.
Article: "Deathly Hallows’ film Breathes Life into Harry Potter Book Sales"
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