A spinner rack is a rotating merchandise display, usually placed on a retailer's floor or counter. Often used to display magazines, paperbacks,[1] greeting cards, postcards, hats, or seeds, the spinner rack is closely associated with the comic book industry.
A typical spinner rack is composed of a metal central spine with wire pockets, baskets, or pegs. A floor unit may have between four and twelve tiers (usually with four pockets on each tier) that may or may not rotate independently. Additional features may include a signholder that sits on top of the unit. (A typical comics spinner rack would have 44 pockets, with each pocket holding around five comics.)[2]
Author George R. R. Martin, in writing about the spinner racks he knew as a child, notes that they offered a hodge-podge of titles (in his case paperbacks) regardless of genre, and thus exposed readers to a wide variety of writing, as opposed to the modern bookstore, where books are generally categorized by topic.[1]