The leaders for readers
Independent bookstores use the human touch as they find ways to prosper even in an online era
WHEN Valerie Koehler opened Blue Willow Bookshop 20 years ago, she was warned that print was on the way out, online commerce was the future and opening a physical bookstore was fool hardy.
Then on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Koehler walked in to see customers from the neighborhood chatting with her staff and browsing the shelves. They wanted a break from the horrific images on TV. They wanted to see a friendly face and chat about books with people who could find them a good one. They wanted to lose themselves in finding new titles they may never have discovered elsewhere before heading back out to confront reality.
“I personally don’t believe that a website will ever be able to offer that kind of service and that kind of serendipity,” Koehler said.
Independent bookstores like hers seem to have turned the page on predictions of their economicdoom. The American Booksellers Association reports that sales nationally rose by more than 10 percent in 2015 compared to the same period a year earlier and sales in the first two quarters on 2016 remained
“At the end of the day, the physical book remains the perfect invention.” Oren Teicher, American Booksellers Association
strong. Blue Willow, too, has seen a 5 percent uptick each of the past couple of years.
The Pew Research Center recently noted that of the 73 percent of Americans who claim to have read a book last year, 65 percent read a print version. While 28 percent read an e-book and 14 percent listened to an audio version, just 6 percent of American readers said they strictly read digital last year. By comparison, 38 percent read only print books and 28 percent read both.
The same report goes on to note that the share of Americans reading books on tablets has tripled since 2011, and readers on smartphones have doubled in the same time period. The majority, roughly two in three, read print books. That has remained unchanged since 2012.
“At the end of the day, the physical book remains the perfect invention,” said Oren Teicher, CEO of the national booksellers group.
Longtime independents like Blue Willow were among the first to face serious competition from Amazon.com, said Barbara Stewart, professor of retailing and consumer sciences at the University of Houston. The combination of evolving technology at Amazon’s command and the ease with which consumers have adapted has forced many brick-and-mortar retailers in all industries to differentiate themselves as much as possible from their online counterparts.
This primarily involves focusing on a shopping experience built around human interactions akin to what Koehler saw play out in her store.
“We shop for lots of different reasons and buying something is only one of them,” Stewart said. “We haven’t lost the human aspect of retail and it’s wonderful.”
Technology is forcing changes, however. Many local independents offer e-books through a partnership with the Canadian online bookseller Kobo. Customers can search and purchase e-books to download from a Kobo site tailored specifically for a physical bookstore, which then gets a cut of that sale.
Murder by the Book, which specializes in the mystery and crime genre, of- fers e-books through Kobo primarily as a courtesy to its customers, even though it has lost some customers to the popularity of e-books and e-readers, particularly between2011 and2013.
Owner McKenna Jordan said her in-store sales have stabilized since then. She and others say they have been able to succeed, physically and digitally, largely by setting themselves apart from Amazon.
Most independent bookstore managers and owners interviewed agreed that it’s hard to compete with the breadth of Amazon’ s offering sand the ease of ordering online.
They also say Amazon falters when it comes to assisting readers in looking for recommendations, and those who may want to read a book but don’t know where to start.
Jordan noted that the search algorithm isn’t always accurate and browsing through a bookstore offers greater chances at finding titles readers may otherwise have missed.
“The role of the bookstore as a curator of content is more important today than ever before,” Teicher said.
Plus, as Brazos Bookstore manager Mark Haber said, reading an Amazon review lacks the social pleasure of visiting a store.
“People want to be able to come and have a conversation about books,” Haber said.
He said most if not all independent bookstore employees are avid readers and enjoy introducing fellow readers to new titles. He noted, for example, that the Brazos staff read and promoted “The Door” by the Hungarian writer Magda Szabo in August last year. By the time it became a New York Times best seller in December, Brazos already had sold 350 copies.
Local independents and even chains like Half Price Books have taken other efforts to ingrain themselves in their local communities.
Blue Willow partners with local schools and teachers to provide reading materials and coordinate author events. Murder by the Book sends flowers and books to regular customers when they are ill. At the Half Price Books in Montrose, the children’s and young adult fiction section has grown from a single bookshelf to an entire alcove over the years as more families started moving into the neighborhood, said Lane Garrison, the South Houston district manager for the company.
That Montrose store, which worried about losing customers to Amazon as early as 2008, now reports sales this year are up 10 percent compared with the same period last year. Companywide, sales were up 4percent in 2014-2015.
Garrison largely attributes the store and company’s success to their business model, wherein it offers a mix of discounted older titles, NewYork Times bestsellers, music CDs and even a frequently updated vinyl record collection.
In contrast with the smaller local players, national chain Barnes & Noble has yet to recover from the popularity surge of Amazon andits e-reader.
In its most recent quarter, the national retailer reported a loss of $14.4 million and a sales decline of 6.6 percent. Chief financial officer Allen Lindstrom in an earnings call described efforts to redesign 50 stores to give them a more“local focus and community feel ,” akin to what independents have been doing since their inception.
The independents also are trying out new strategies.
Murder By the Book is in its second year of offering a frequent-event card program that offers $20 in store credit for customers who attend 10 in-store events. When participants in the Murder by the Book Irregulars program spend $500 over the course of a year, they get 3 percent back on a gift card.
Brazos Bookstore is using Twitter and Facebook to better promote their author events.
And Blue Willow Bookshop celebrated its 20th anniversary Saturday with an all-day in-store party. It will also launch its new subscription service, Baby’s First Year, giving new moms access to a selected book for each of the first 12 months.
The main goal of the new projects is to further build up the bookstores’ community presence.
Jeremy Ellis, general manager of Brazos and regional board member for the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association, said that on average, sales at Brazos have risen by 10 percent in each of the last five years, largely due to its role as a neighborhood gathering space.
That was key, he said, to outlasting many of the superstores, and it’s the model that will help it against Amazon and any other seismic industry shift ahead.
“The best bookstores aren’t trying to be something for everyone,” Ellis said .“They’ re already something for their neighbors .” Dallas-based