Pages from the past
Small, independent shops thriving in NM old-fashioned literary experience to loc
Small, independent shops thrive in NM by delivering old-fashioned literary experience to local bookworms
Even in this digital age, independent bookstores continue to thrive in New Mexico as word nerds seek out a local, literary experience that can’t be found on Amazon.com.
For many years, however, the future looked pretty bleak for the indies with large retail chains like Barnes and Noble, Borders, B Dalton and Waldenbooks muscling into their customer bases. With so many chain book stores having gone dark, or scaling back their business footprints dramatically, New Mexico’s independent brick-and-mortar operators are striving to serve their communities of book lovers.
Clearly a labor of love, no one’s getting rich by running a good old-fashioned bookstore, usually consisting of a single store. These businesses may not have the vast inventory or low prices of an internet giant, but they can offer customers tightly curated collections, special events and a like-minded community of bookworms, say local owners.
“As the volume of books published increases, the importance of a bookseller that can recommend titles has never been greater,” said Oren Teicher, chief executive officer of the ABA. In a recent letter to members, Teicher said yearend book sale figures for the indie channel in 2017 were up 2.6 percent over 2016. “This …
increase — while a bit more modest than previous years — represents continued, sustained growth over the past five years,” Teicher said.
“It’s still a life of genteel poverty,” said Noemi de Bodisco, the owner of two op.cit. bookstores in Santa Fe and Taos and another called Tome on the Range in Las Vegas, N.M.
“You have to be frugal,” she said of a venture that’s not particularly lucrative, but does provide her with a “very modest” living.
She was aghast at a seminar conducted by the ABA when a new bookstore owner talked about spending $100,000 on fixtures. Rather than invest in such frills, de Bodisco is plowing any profits back into inventory to fill the shelves, keep the lights on and pay her employees, one of whom is a former rocket scientist turned poet.
She said customers also like the funky ambience of the op.cit. stores in Taos and in Santa Fe’s DeVargas Center Mall. “Both are book towns and art towns,” with plenty of wellheeled residents and tourists. Both categories of clientele offer a welcome base of financial support, said de Bodisco, who retired from a career in technology before becoming a bookseller.
She said there’s an aesthetic with physical books that still resonate with consumers who frequent a bricks-and-mortar location like op.cit. (the name is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase opus citatum, meaning “the work cited.”) There are some things the digital world can’t duplicate, like the crisp sound of a page flipping or the soft crack the binding makes when a new hardcover is opened for the first time, said de Bodisco.
“There has to be a balance,” she said. “There are too many screens in our lives. Paper books go to a different part of your brain.”
Retail therapy
On a recent sunny spring day, northeast Albuquerque resident Catherine Kroll was enjoying a little retail therapy at Page 1 Books, which she has patronized for years. “The experience you
can’t get online is browsing through books,” said Kroll. “There’s a magical feeling about opening a book for the first time.”
A Harvard Business School study attributed the comeback of independent book stores to the buy local movement and success in carrying interesting titles and hosting book-oriented community events.
Between 1995 and 2000, the number of independent bookstores in the United States plummeted 43 percent, according to the American Booksellers Association, a nonprofit trade group dedicated to the promotion of independent bookstores.
While pressure from Amazon forced Borders, B Dalton and Waldenbooks out of business between 2010 and 2011, indie bookstores staged an unexpected comeback. Between 2009 and 2015, the ABA reported 35 percent growth in independent booksellers, from 1,651 stores to 2,227.
Op.cit. Taos has the same business model as op.cit. in Santa Fe, and Tome On The Range, which de Bodisco bought in 2013. The stock includes new, used and remainder books, special orders and space for selfpublished authors to display and sell their books.
“But every store is different,” she says. “It all depends on the community.”
Heading south, there are at least a half-dozen independent bookstores in the Albuquerque area, and each has a unique niche. Bookworks corners the market in Los Ranchos. Under Charlie’s Covers is one of the largest and most popular book sellers in Bernalillo. Blue Eagle Metaphysical Emporium might be considered the Duke City’s go-to place for New Age titles, plus divination tools and daily psychic readings. Downtown Books has aisles jammed with books reflecting a wide range of genres. Page 1 Books is a mainstay for used and new books in the Northeast Heights. And Title Wave is a cozy little shop packed with lots of interesting tomes, tucked on a side street near Menaul and Wyoming.
Bookworks expanding
The 34 year-old Bookworks for new and used books is clearly thriving. Thanks to a supportive landlord, it is undergoing a remodel to open up the space to accommodate more customers who attend 400500 events a year like author talks and concerts. The store also hosts book clubs. “We have a very loyal following,” owner Danielle Foster said of the business at 4022 Rio Grande NW. “Our local community is very focused on supporting small business,” said Foster, adding that the store relies on repeat business from area residents, students at several schools and nearby college campuses.
“So much of what goes into a successful indie bookstore is the stock, and knowing what sells with your customers and what doesn’t,” she said.
“Something that we shine at is our literary events,” said Foster, who used to manage a B Dalton bookstore in the San Francisco Bay Area. The store sells a lot of regional-based titles. It also partners with community groups to produce lectures, talks and signings both at the store and at off-site venues.
Foster and many of the local bookstore proprietors also credit their success to their warm, cozy and inviting environments — something online retailers and larger chain stores can’t offer.
But one does not live by book sales alone in order to pay the rent. “We don’t have a huge margin (on books), so we look to sales of gift items” to help the bottom line, said Foster, referring to cards, stationery, calendars, coloring books, jigsaw puzzles and items like literature-themed tote bags and coffee mugs. All the retailers interviewed for this story said soft goods sales are an important part of the revenue stream.
Foster believes that digital devices can happily co-exist with the paper version, and the business offers ebooks through its partnership with Kobo (an anagram of book), a Canadian company that sells e-books, audiobooks, e-readers and tablet computers.
Back to the basics
As a testimony to the power of print, consider the case of Page 1 Books owner Steven Morado Stout.
In business since 1981, Stout embraced a multimedia model some years back, but has happily returned to the printed page as his bread and butter.
Page 1 has seen several locations since opening in the El Dorado Square shopping center on the southeast corner of Juan Tabo and Montgomery boulevards. Pre-internet, Page 1 did a brisk business as a newsstand operator. “We sold a lot of Playboy magazines,” said Stout who later shifted the store across Juan Tabo into a 24,500-square-foot site at 11018 Montgomery NE.
In 1996, he dropped a line of music products because of “fierce competition from the discount chains.” The next year, he also closed a web design and computer software division. There were several lean years for the business, which lost its lease to make way for a Walmart Neighborhood Market and sought bankruptcy protection.
Stout said customers rallied around the store during bankruptcy, which he resolved, and that business “has picked up” since he moved to a smaller space five years ago in the Mountain Run Shopping
Center, which provides a nice customer stream and lots of parking. He recently signed another five-year lease.
“We decided just to become an old-fashioned bookstore,” said Stout. Page 1 has a strong used-book focus, buying gently used titles from customers for cash or store credit. “Getting into used books is what saved us.”
There’s also a fairly extensive collection of periodicals, including foreign language titles.
“Parents and grandparents have grown up with Page 1 and many tell me they want to put a physical book in their kids’ hands,” said Stout.
“I see a lot of teens who look like they are on a bookstore ‘date,” Stout said of some Gen-Zers drawn to old-school items like rickety typewriters, record players and now printed books.
“They shop and then go over to the bakery and talk about what they’re reading.”