Jochen -
Independent and Used bookstores definitely took a hit, first from
the Big Boxes like Hastings and Barnes and Noble and then a
double-whammy from Amazon. I don't know how many more went down
because of COVID... We have a very serious local collection of
used/independent stores whose flagship locals might recognize: Op
Cit . They have two satellite shops in Taos and Las Vegas,
NM. The Taos shop is in the location of another well loved/known
independent/used shop known as Moby Dickens... I cant remember the
new name, but I think it is more interesting than "Op Cit Taos".
The Las Vegas branch is called "Tome on the Range".
When the COVID shutdown made me want to order books instead of browsing for them as I usually do (even if I subsequently order because the store doesn't have them in stock) my instinct was to go straight to Amazon, but I also knew that OpCit (for example) was surely suffering mightily from no walk-in business for months at least. Even though I don't like doing phone transactions, I gave over and quickly discovered that they were hyper efficient if I just looked the book up and sent them a link... trying to avoid (ab)using *other* commercial sites for this (only to not buy from them) but rather using publisher references, goodreads, magazine/blog reviews, etc. to get the front/back matter, excerpts and even reviews that I might otherwise get while browsing.
This is all somewhat ironic since I *literally* had a short back
and forth with Bezos by e-mail in roughly 1995. I was a
long-time customer/friend of the very successful indie bookstore
in Los Alamos, R Books... which thrived on a combination of a
literate professional-class population, a varied but generally
generous policy on LANL Staff purchasing from local stores for
reimbursement (especially during the Tech Boom) and a visiting
population of international professionals who for
distribution/tariff reasons were motivated to buy US
published/distributed books from R Books (including ordering
through them) and hand-carry or even ship (overseas book rate)
home. It seems like Aussies were the most prominent for some
reason... touting the well-respected chain of Bookstores there
known as Dymocks(sp?). I think this had quite a bit to do with
the British Commonwealth protectionism for Commonwealth
publishers, supporting UK/etc editions being published in parallel
with US editions of many titles... but of course not *all*, thus
the international purchasers at R Books.
All this background to frame my conversation with Bezos... I was
negotiating with R Books to open the empty shopspace next to them
as a coffee shop, bust open an archway or two between them and
share the floorspace and possibly staff... mitigating some of
their risk for adding a coffee shop, and lowering the
logistics-to-entry for an (righteous?) entrepreneurial
activity. I pinged Bezos on a whim, suggesting to him that
small, independent bookstores like R Books might make good
"fulfillment" partners... so when you browse for a book on Amazon
(they weren't heavily into used, yet, and R Books was strictly new
as well), you might have been offered the option of picking it up
in-person immediately at a local indie for a small discount from
retail (indies were not discounting books then, except to clear
stock) and then have Amazon score a small "referral fee" and the
bookstore make a small(er) profit, but slow the leak from walk-in
to online. There were lots of potential problems with this
idea... or nuanced details to work out so that it wasn't actually
aggravating the problem for the indies... but Bezos' answer was
simple: "we don't need you, you are a thing of the past, we are
going to revolutionize bookselling, get out of my way".
To add insult to injury, it was perhaps 2 weeks later that the
negotiations with the landlord on the adjacent space went crazy
when it was publicly announced that Starbucks was moving in around
the corner (a different landlord) and it turned out, that the
landlord's delays were all about them expecting to land Starbucks
in *another* of their properties. They continued to try to court
us to open the shop as planned once they lost the Starbuck's deal,
but naturally a Starbucks within a short walk did not bode well
for a local coffee shop, even if we did have books too! We
backed off and due to other complications of similar enough kind,
R Books shut down maybe 5 years later. Salt in the insulted
injury included Starbucks selling NYT paper (national contract) in
a manner which undermined R books roughly 40 papers a day that
represented 40 loyal customers who dropped in every day (or week
for Sunday only) with the residual value of them as likely as not
to spot if not buy on the spot, their next book read. R Books
had to pre-purchase all copies and on Sunday, for example a few
leftover copies could negate or reverse any profits they might
have gotten, nevertheless they continued it as "a service to the
community". Recently I tried buying an NYT at that very Starbucks
and was told "I don't think we carry them anymore, I haven't seen
one in a while". Now folks in Los Alamos have to (I guess) try
for home delivery or travel to Santa Fe. I hear fro Donald that
it is "failing" anyway...
A good 10 years later I found myself opening a bookstore in Santa
Fe with my partner, Suzanne. She was a rabid bibliophile,
eclipsing me in both quantity and quality by magnitudes (2^n or
10^n, i'm not sure)... Our home and expanding storage sheds,
trailer, etc. were overflowing and we decided to take a swing at
selling them (maybe?) as fast as she could collect them. It was
called Hunt and Gather... and was right next to the Aztec Cafe in
Santa Fe, opposite Double Take and was a fairly popular hotspot
for Suzanne's large entourage of friends and acquaintances, as the
shop doubled as an art-space presenting almost exclusively
book-arts exhibitions. We only stayed afloat for 1 year, pretty
much just breaking even on expenses, but including a shop-girl
salary to my daughter who maintained the front desk about
half-time so Suzanne could take care of other business (allowing
my daughter to finish her Bachelors without working at a
*different* mcJob that year). It engaged us with a wide range of
other bookstore owners, both local and those traveling the country
doing their own hunting and gathering!
I doubt I will have a formal bookstore running when you visit,
but I *do* have a full 2 tonnes of books stored in a covered
trailer from that era you could peruse! I've pared my personal
collection down to what a "normal" bibliophile's house might have
which means about 1/2 are in yet another storage location!
Unfortunately *those* are the ones you would more likely want to
see!
I'd recommend a leisurely drive through the US (if you can afford the time), stopping at the myriad small bookstores and even larger chain-complexes still afloat. Albuquerque, NM has a few stores, including ( think, the last instance of a former small-network of shops ) Bound to be Read, Denver has a complex of bookstores named Tattered Cover, and Portland has the famous Powell's group. Cody's in Berkeley was a major destination until it closed (5 or more years ago?) and City Lights in San Francisco is a must-visit. There have to be dozens more of that scale and of course thousands in small towns across our 48 continental states!
I hope you can and do make such a sojourn!
- Steve
Do you think bookstores may die out? They have become rare here in Europe.
In L.A. there is a nice used bookstore named "The Last Bookstore"
When Biden has won and Covid is gone next year I would like to visit California, including L.A. and San Francisco, before the last bookstore is gone.
-J.
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