Houston Chronicle: In Plot Twist, Independent Bookstores Survive Forecasted Doom

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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 foolhardy.
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 economic doom. 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 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, offers 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 between 2011 and 2013.
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 offerings and 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. ...continued in next post...
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