Even with magic as strong as Harry Potter's, Publisher's Weekly reported today that bookstore sales continued to fall for the fifth consecutive month. According to the U.S. Census bureau, sales in May were down 4.3%, to $1.10 billion.

However, bookstore sales totaled $6.20 billion in the period between January and May. The retail segment in total saw sales up 5.6% in May, and were ahead 4.1% for the first five months of 2007.

How does that jibe with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the latest (and last) Potter tome selling an unprecedented nine million copies in the U.S. and Britain in its first 24 hours of release? Well it's all good, everyone agrees, compelling millions of kids to lay aside their Nintendo for the week and venture into bookstores. But as Sara Nelson, editor-in-chief of Publishers Weekly recently wrote, there are still some problems in the numbers.

"Take, for example, the retailers, big and small. The former have made the dubious choice to discount HPATDH so drastically that even they admit their revenue - on the most popular book in history! - will be down this year. The latter can't begin to compete with the economies of scale and some may bypass their distributors and buy direct - at nearly the same discount - from Amazon or Costco."

A piece on Bloomberg offers a similarly dark assessment, suggesting that Big-box retailers like Costco Wholesale Corp. (NASDAQ: COST) and Sam's Club (A division of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) discount the book so deeply as to use it as more a customer draw then a revenue-booster. In the meantime, independent bookstores that can't afford to discount this most popular literary offering in history must resort to any tactic they can to draw customers in, including hosting Potter parties, and other community-building schemes.

I have another idea for keeping small booksellers and their particular brand of magic alive. Maybe every wealthy best-selling author (and Oprah, who's responsible for creating a few) could each sponsor an independent bookstore. Surely it's not too much to ask from someone who probably spent the better part of their youths perusing the musty stacks. Besides, what's J.K. Rowling got to do these days?

Gallery: Everybody loves Harry Potter

Not even Harry can save bookstores from their fate originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 16 Jul 2007 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.