Tipping Points??

After reading a posting on Facebook of Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, Outliers (how do your actually pronounce this word?), and remembering several other earlier blogs on the same book in my Google Reader, I decided to check out the book at Borders (Curve). 

I remembered that just a few weeks ago, the book was prominently displayed and promoted at the entrance rack when it was first made available at Borders. So, I was thinking that it would be displayed at the same place. I was even expecting the buy two for 20% discount offer. But to my surprise, the book was no where to be found. After spending 30 minutes searching for it on my own, I decided to ask the support staff instead. The moment I mentioned the title, (that was when I start to wonder whether I had pronounced it correctly because she certainly said it with a different pronunciation than mine) the friendly staff exclaimed that the title was all sold out. She asked me why so many were asking for this book and I explained to her that this could be due to the word of mouth or blogs, in this case, that had been spreading over the Internet. Now, she understood why fifteen copies of the book were sold off immediately after they arrived at her store at Curve. Curious to know more about social networking, I asked her about Tipping Point, and she said they ran out of this title too after checking her computer. I was pretty surprised at this situation because it was not so often that I could not find popular and general book titles that I want at any local book store. This was a first for me.

Then, I thought to myself. Why not check out at MPH since it was also located at Curve and was not far away from Borders? So after a short walk to MPH and with only 30 minutes left for browsing before the store closed, I searched quite quickly at the usual racks where this title would have been displayed. Initially, I could not find any except for Blink (this title was also available at Borders). I thought the sales must really be good for this book to have two stores in the same vicinity selling off their copies of the same title. Then, after a last desperate attempt and a quick check with the sales staff, I actually found both Outliers and Tipping Point. And there were many copies available. So sales was not as brisk  as I thought at this book store. 

I decided to hold off the purchase of Outliers and bought the two older titles instead after a quick glance. After reading a few pages of Tipping Point, I started thinking why the brisk sales at Borders did not 'tip' over to MPH? What prevented it from happening?

• Was the interest on the book not suficient enough to cause the potential customers to check out another store at the same mall?
• Was it because they did not know about the existence of another book store?
• Was it because the location of MPH was much less visible or prominent compared to Borders?
• Was it because of the discount promotions available at Borders (MPH was having sales too)?
• Or were there other hidden reasons that I could not think of?

 Perhaps after reading Tipping Point, I will understand this phenomenon a bit better.