Following up on the SNLC 2 weeks ago about St. Louis indie bookstores forming an informal coalition to try to keep each other alive, one story that RFT reporter Aimee Levitt didn't have room for, as she acknowledged, was the closing of the Piece of Mind bookstore in Edwardsville, IL. The article noted the two big kahunae which brought her store down, the usual suspects, namely Borders and......
.....Amazon.com (natch). Levitt noted:
"It wasn't Amazon that killed off Piece of Mind, though. Three years ago, the store suffered two devastating blows almost simultaneously. First, the recession hit. Then Borders announced it was opening up a new superstore a quarter-mile from Allen's store.
Allen tried to fight the Borders menace by moving from her old spot in a strip mall to a new location in downtown Edwardsville, an area that supported more local businesses. The customers didn't follow. It wasn't lack of loyalty, they claimed, it was just that they didn't know where the new store was."
You'll see in the next passage that once people learned that Piece of Mind was hurting financially, once they figured out the new location, more customers started to show up. However, eventually, again per Levitt:
"But the tipping point was Amazon: She knew she could never match the online retailer's discounts.
Last summer, she decided to close up shop for good. Despite all their lip service about the importance of supporting local businesses, she felt that the community's actions spoke louder: They would rather get their books from a superstore or online.....
She's trying to be charitable to her former customers. 'I used to think [shopping at Borders and Amazon] was hurtful,' she says. 'But people don't think it through. If they buy on Amazon, they can't expect to have a local business to support. There comes a point when the community isn't supporting you at a level that allows you to survive.'"
However, if you go back to Levitt's earlier article (specifically the last part), about the various indie bookstores getting together to help each other out, there's one passage regarding Amazon.com and a voice of dissent from one of the indie store owners (emphasis mine):
"'I'm sorry, I love Amazon,' says Deborah Herrington, who, along with her husband Peter, owns the venerable used-book temple Dunaway Books on South Grand Boulevard. 'We sell 45 percent of our inventory online on Amazon — eBay got too expensive.'"
It isn't stated in Levitt's side article whether Allen and Piece of Mind sold any of PoM's inventory on Amazon. IMUHO, my guess is "no", from the way that article reads. At Dunaway Books, however, Herrington obviously has taken the attitude that, since we can't do anything about the ruthless 900-ton monster in the room, we may as well make use of it.
(I must admit, however, to considerable disbelief at the 45% figure, since every time I go to Dunaway, it seems that the same books are still on the same shelves each time I go, which tells you the kind of books I scout there. Or perhaps she meant 45% of their total sales are on Amazon. Plus, Dunaway's inventory, at least the visible stock, is huge. But 3CM digresses, as usual.)
Besides the ability of Amazon, by its sheer scale, to undercut small bookstores even more than Borders, one disadvantage of bookstores vs. Amazon or other electronic sellers is summed up by Bill Fiedler, owner of Gallery Bookstore in Chicago (Lakeview), from this article by Nida Tahir of Northwestern's Medill school of journalism:
"Fiedler believes his bookstore's biggest competitors aren't Amazon or Barnes & Noble, it's the 'so-called' online booksellers who undercut price by selling books as cheap as a dollar. These independent online booksellers can sell books at the lowest possible price because they don't have to pay overhead costs that brick and mortar shops like Gallery Bookstores do."
I sort of resemble that remark, since I've sold stuff on Amazon myself, albeit CDs, with the exception of 1 book some time back. I have bought a very few books on Amazon over the years, so in a small way, you could say that I'm part of the problem. However, there are semi-complicated subtexts behind the reason why I sell stuff on Amazon, which may wait for a future SNLC.
One RFT reader who goes by the alias of "Ralpheatsbeef" had some forthright advice for the indie booksellers in response to Levitt's main article here, which I reproduce in full:
"Indies need to redefine the battle. They cannot compete with Amazon on price and volume — not with coupons, bookstore cruises or anything else — because Amazon can sell the books for less than your cost. Gimmicks cannot overcome the monstrous economic disadvantage.
To survive, you must sell what they cannot. What does Amazon not have? People — knowledgeable, helpful, caring, interesting people. Setting — a good bookstore is a place people feel they have ownership; a comfort zone with friends and potential friends, and a warmth that cannot be stockpiled in a warehouse and delivered by FedEx on demand. Plot — where people and place come together, stories happen and intertwine.
A good bookstore is like a good book come to life. It is that experience and those relationships that set it apart from the electronic newcomers with their cold efficiency. You have to get people, especially young people raised in the glow of their many devices, to look up and walk in and give them a chance to recognize the value you are providing.
You may not be in the business of selling books, as much as the business of selling people, place and plot."
Granted, a place like Dunaway Books is an exception, because it deals in used books pretty much exclusively that I can tell, unlike places here like Subterranean and Left Bank, whose primary inventory is first run (although Left Bank has a decent-sized used stock in the "basement"). Of course, the flip side of that is that Subterranean and Left Bank can return unused stock to the publisher. Used bookstores can't do that, as they're stuck with what people sell them or trade in (in self's case, the latter). In general, given how e-commerce has taken over so much in sales of books and music, good luck to places like Subterranean and Left Bank in the first-run front line, as well as Dunaway on the used front.
With that, time for the usual SNLC protocol, namely your loser stories of the week. You'll note that this is yet another autobot posting from 3CM the absentee loser. So he's asked the inimitable cfk of Bookflurries fame, appropriately enough, to take over the chit-chat for this session. Will be back (hopefully) to mojo and respond to comments later, but for now, have fun, kiddies.....