Placement of Political Books in Bookstore [View All]

[GiovanniC]

All right, this has been bugging me since a little before Christmas. I usually do my book-shopping at a small local chain of bookstores. But I've been noticing something about product placement that's concerned me a little bit.

In the front of the store there is the Michael Moore book "Dude Where's My Country?" Next to it is Bill O'Lielly's book, "Who's Looking Out for -- SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP!" Equal time, right? I can dig that.

In the political science section there are the usual suspects... Krugman, Coulter, Conason, Hannity, Carville, etc. Al Franken was there as well. General Wesley Clark's book, "Winning Modern Wars", was not there, although it may have been sold out. They only keep one or two books like that on the shelf at any given time because, let's face it, political nerds such as ourselves are in the minority. But although they have books from both the left and the right, it seems as though the books from the right wing are MUCH more prominently displayed. They'll face Coulter, Hannity, and Ingraham so their covers are displayed, while Carville, Franken, etc. have only the spine of the book visible. WTF?

Another interesting omission was Alan Colmes's book, "Red, White, and Whatever You Say, Hannity". I found that book later, however... under "HUMOR". "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them" wasn't in humor. "Dude Where's My Country?" wasn't in humor. But Alan Colmes's book is humor. WTF?

I think I remember hearing that B&N and Borders were just as bad. What's the deal?