Book exchanges are popular, again – in all sorts of retail situations including non-book retail. They take little space, require no work and they attract a following.
This photo shows one in the window of a cafe on Swan Street, Richmond. It shows how small a book exchange can be, how it can use space that otherwise may have little value.
Even if you don’t sell books a book exchange can work as it attracts people who like to read and these people could be magazine customers. I suspect they are more likely to be card customers, as opposed to people who do not read or write that much.
My suggestion is to try it, out the front of your store ideally and if permitted. See how it goes.
Sometimes, the best road to a goal is not a straight line. This is how the book exchanges work for retailers I have spoken with. Offering the service pitches their businesses in a different light, it has people noticing them who in the past had not. One retailer told me the exchange attracted an avid letter writer, who had not thought of visiting their shop for stationery previously.
In retail today we need to leverage many ways of attracting shoppers to our businesses. The idea of a book exchange is one. I especially like it for rural, regional and high street newsagencies.