The Wall Street Journal-20080118-WEEKEND JOURNAL- Taste- Who-s Buying the Bookstore-
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WEEKEND JOURNAL; Taste: Who's Buying the Bookstore?
The "Going Out of Business" signs disappeared from the windows of Brent Books and Cards in downtown Chicago last Friday. They had gone up a month earlier when the owner of the corner store, Adam Brent, decided -- like many local bookstore owners before him -- that he could no longer keep his little shop alive. Then, shortly before Christmas, a loyal and affluent customer walked up to the counter and offered to put up six figures of his own money to keep the store open. After a flurry of work with the lawyers, Mr. Brent is now placing orders with publishers to revive his 10-year-old establishment.
The image of the beleaguered small bookstore has become a cultural standby in the era of Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. Look no further than the movie "You've Got Mail," in which Meg Ryan's little shop was forced under by Tom Hanks's hulking chain store. The roster of the American Booksellers Association -- the trade association for independent stores -- has plummeted to about 1,800 members from more than 4,000 15 years ago.
The decline of these stores has become a pet cause for buy-local activists, eliciting shrill cries each time a new Borders goes up. In the Bay area, the closure of one neighborhood bookstore even provoked debate at city council meetings.
But these days, a number of independent bookstores have been drawing more than pity from devotees. From Chicago to Brooklyn, N.Y., and from Houston to Eugene, Ore., loyal customers have been stepping up and putting down serious cash to save their neighborhood bookstores. These individuals see themselves more as donors than investors, committed to saving the ambiance and personal service of their local store. They also provide a welcome alternative to lawsuits (like the one the American Booksellers Association filed against Barnes & Noble a few years back) and calls for government intervention against the corporate giants.
"I've been so humbled -- to have a community say 'we love what you do and we want to help you,'" said Clark Kepler, owner of Kepler's Books and Magazines in Menlo Park, Calif. In 2005, his store, near the Stanford University campus, was one of the first to attract investors after struggling financially. Since then, Mr. Kepler has heard from at least a dozen other stores that were trying similar ways to stay alive. He has told them what his own investors were told: "This is an investment from the heart. Don't do this if you expect to see this money again."
The rescues have come at the same time as a modest upswing for independent bookstores. During most of the past decade, between 200 and 300 independents have gone out of business each year -- with no newcomers to replace them. In the past three years, the number going under has remained steady, but about 100 stores have opened each of the past three years.
Oren Teicher, the chief operating officer of the American Booksellers Association, says he still warns prospective owners that it is an unforgiving industry. "The margins are small, the competition is fierce, and you're selling a product that is the same no matter where you buy it," Mr. Teicher says.
In the past five years independent bookstore owners have been challenged not only by the chain stores and Amazon.com but also by the spread of bookselling into big-box stores like Costco. One study suggests that fewer than half of all books are now sold in bookstores.
At Chicago's Women and Children First bookstore, the co-owners tried a number of strategies to fend off a decline. But as Linda Bubon, one of the co-owners, put it: "We can't give massive discounts or order from around the world -- and, of course, we have to charge taxes," unlike many online sellers. These are the forces that have led so many bookstores to shut their doors for good. Indeed, most of the rescue operations began after an admission of defeat. Kepler's actually closed -- and Brent Books announced its closing. At the Community Bookstore, in Brooklyn, the owner, Catherine Bohne, composed this email to her customers last February: "I've gambled and staked everything I have, including every last asset, every ounce of my energy, and . . . it seems it isn't enough to make things work."
These announcements have elicited swift replies from coast to coast. After a June 2005 article appeared in a Eugene, Ore., newspaper proclaiming the imminent demise of that city's Tsunami Books, a group of professors from the local university offered some $35,000 to save it. In the past year, the number of investors in Tsunami has grown to 28 -- who collectively own a third of it.
These efforts have generally been impromptu, and each store has come up with its own unique economic solution. At Brazos Bookstore, near Rice University in Houston, 25 people put up a minimum of $10,000 each to buy the store from the owner who was ready to close it in June 2006. Women and Children First, in Chicago, simply took donations -- and "members" at $25 a head.
The contributors to the stores are often well off. John Turturro, an actor who became an investor in Brooklyn's Community Bookstore, had the disposable income to spare. But another of the store's seven investors, Rebeccah Welch, took out a loan with her partner against their apartment to kick in $10,000. "It's not as though we have extra money," says Ms. Welch. "We invested because it's almost like an educational institution; it's an anchor for the community."
Mr. Teicher says he gets lots of inquiries from stores interested in going down this road but voices a note of skepticism. "At the end of the day, bookstores are businesses." There have been cooperative bookstores that drew community support and still went down the drain. Big Table Books, in Ames, Iowa, had 156 owners, including the author Jane Smiley, yet was forced to close in 2006.
But the new rescue efforts seem more practical than the co-op models from the 1970s. At Women and Children First, a customer and businesswoman is helping the store create a five-year strategic plan. Meanwhile, the Community Bookstore renegotiated its mortgage with the help of a customer. Thanks to the cash injections, many of the stores have been able to advertise and, as a result, have seen double-digit increases in sales percentages. Even better, perhaps, the activists have at long last put their money where their mouths are.
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Mr. Popper is news editor of the Forward.
