Independent Bookstore Survival Tips

The rise in rents, spread of corporate chains, popularity of online shopping, and increase in e-book reading have made it difficult for small bookstores to survive.
 

BookCourt in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, is doing more than cobbling together a living.
Photo via thebrooklynink.com

Despite it all, some indie bookstores are actually thriving. How are they doing it?

Using six independent bookstores in Manhattan and Brooklyn as examples, New York magazine points out how small booksellers are not only surviving but thriving in the current climate. What's their secret? According to New York magazine, for a small bookstore to be successful these days, it would help if it:

1. Owns the building in which the bookstore operates. This is the case with BookCourt, located in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. The owners of BookCourt, Henry Zook and Mary Gannett, bought the building, 163 Court Street, back in 1984 for a mere $160,000. By buying the building outright, Zook and Gannett have avoided the fate of some of their fellow booksellers, who are struggling with or have fallen victim to skyrocketing rents.

2. Sells the space for a commercial shoot, as powerHouse Arena occasionally does. powerHouse Arena is housed in a cavernous, 10,000-square-foot space that is in a riverfront neighborhood and onetime warehouse district in Brooklyn. Since the bookstore has so much space at its disposal, owner Daniel Power rents some of it out for photo and advertising shoots, making a pretty penny. In fact, just one major commercial shoot - say, for a big Internet provider - could cover the store's rent for an entire month.

3. Outlasts the nearby Barnes & Noble location. Operating on the quiet corner of West 10th Street and Waverly Place in Greenwich Village, Three Lives & Company noticed an uptick in business after the Barnes & Noble up the street closed. "Suddenly," owner Toby Cox told New York magazine, "people realized we were here. I never thought of Barnes & Noble as a competitor. I didn't think our customers overlapped. But after they closed, I realized they had been taking our customers after all."

For more tips for small bookstore survival, spotlighting three more independent bookstore success stories, check out the New York article "6 NYC Independent Bookstores That Are Thriving" at THIS LINK.

How a Bookstore Selects the Books It Sells

I think anyone who's ever browsed a bookstore has wondered why certain books were on store shelves and others weren't. As Sam Sacks, a book clerk for Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, explains it in the New Yorker, it all comes down to the personal bias of those who run the bookstore. "Bookstores are human places," Sacks says. "They are extensions of the personalities of the men and women who operate them." What about the customers? A longtime bookseller confided to Sacks: "We do this for the books, not for the customers."

The interior of Housing Works Bookstore Cafe.
Image via e.j.i./flickr

If you've been a customer at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, located at 126 Crosby Street in New York's SoHo neighborhood, you were undoubtedly surrounded by its sizable and eclectic selection of books. Where did they come from? According to Sacks, they're "from publishers or magazines getting rid of their overflow, from the apartments of lifelong readers who have died, or simply from the shelves of New Yorkers who need to clear the space." So, how do certain titles reach store shelves? There is a method, despite the personal bias that's inherent in picking inventory. Sacks illustrates this in his New Yorker piece.

At Housing Works, Sacks sifts through all the boxes and bags of donated books and selects what the store will sell, both at its brick-and-mortar location and on its website. He admits to a preference for certain genres: "I have always thought that the backbone of a good used-book store is formed by its fiction and history sections, so whenever possible I separated these books for the floor. Naturally, there were exceptions," he says. "Specialized histories with a narrowly scholarly focus are better sold online - so a history of the Punic Wars makes it to the store; a study of urinals during the reign of Hadrian doesn't."

Just as Sacks has a propensity for particular genres, affecting what is sold at Housing Works, he also has a fierce aversion to certain book forms, like the hardcover. "I do not like hardcover books," he discloses. "They are needlessly bulky and cumbersome, far less attractive or readable than their svelte paperback siblings. Unless the hardcover was of a perennial seller (your Doris Kearns Goodwins or John Irvings), I didn't allow them to eat up the limited shelf space."

It's interesting to read about what goes on behind the scenes at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe and the other bookstores where Sacks has worked, including The Strand and Barnes & Noble, the latter of which he says is "unjustly maligned. It's true that the mind governing these stores is corporate, but the staff tends to be far better read and more informed than detractors allow, and the selection is large and egalitarian." For more insider information on the bookstores whose selections are not as large as Barnes & Noble's and are much more curated, see Sam Sacks' article for the New Yorker, "The Bookstore Brain: How Bookstores Choose Their Books," at THIS LINK.

BN.com Now Selling More Than Just Books

Barnes & Noble is going beyond selling books on its website, BN.com. On Thursday, October 20, a representative for the largest U.S. bookstore chain announced that housewares, consumer electronics, and more will now be sold on the company's website.

screenshot from consumerist.com

I can't blame Barnes & Noble for diversifying its online offerings, considering the recent demise of Borders. Also, by offering more than just books, movies, and music, Barnes & Noble will remain competitive with Amazon, another online seller of books and seemingly everything else under the sun.

See the Chicago Tribune article below for more info on this latest development.

Chicago Tribue * October 20, 2011

Barnes & Noble Expands Beyond Books

Online retailer adding home products and consumer electronics

via Reuters

Barnes & Noble Inc. is adding home products and consumer electronics to the items available on its online marketplace, the latest move by the retailer to rely less on book sales and fend off e-commerce rivals like Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc.

Barnes & Noble, the largest U.S. bookstore chain, has largely focused on books for its marketplace. Members will now also be able to buy and sell items like rugs, cooking items and children's games, the company said Thursday.

The retailer has struggled with declining book sales for years, but its online sales, helped by its Nook e-reader and digital books, have soared.

Sales on its bn.com rose 36.9 percent to $198 million in its most recent quarter and now account for 14 percent of overall sales.