Kindling the Fire for Real Books

For years, we’ve watched as bookstores have struggled and died while online sales of books boomed.

“A bookstore is one of the many pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.” — Jerry Seinfeld

Now, just as summer is approaching — the perfect time to be browsing for a good beach book — comes news that the independent book store is making a big comeback. Those cozy, charming repositories of tales that will transport and transform you are on the rise. Not only that, but book sales are up, too.

The American Booksellers Association, a trade group for independents, has grown for the seventh consecutive year, CEO Oren Teicher said last month. Membership once exceeded 3,000, and while the numbers aren’t at that level, it’s good news that this year membership is up to 1,775 stores — a gain of 63 over the previous year. And sales of books at the stores are up 10 percent.

It’s a surprise, given that all we’ve been hearing are gloom and doom forecasts for books.

Independent sellers have been in sorry shape, shuttering their shops for the last decade, largely because of competition from online behemoth Amazon.com and from superstore chains like Barnes & Noble and Borders. The concept was immortalized in the 1998 Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan movie, “You’ve Got Mail,” released just as the box store trend was starting. But now Borders has gone out of business, and Barnes & Noble is said to be struggling.

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“During my 17 years as a bookseller, I’ve seen a lot of changes in the book business,” writes Ann Walters on a blog connected with the Lake Forest Book Store in Illinois.

When she started working at the shop, “there were no e-books. Borders was our biggest competitor and no one in the United States had heard of J.K. Rowling. The book business has changed dramatically in many ways, but independent bookstores still do what they’ve always done — help readers choose books that will enthrall, delight, and surprise them.”

In Washington, D.C., Riverby Books, a family-owned Capitol Hill bookstore, was about to go under last year until former journalist Lori Grisham stepped up to manage it — and save it.

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Also last year, Amazon opened its first physical bookstore in the University Village shopping mall in Seattle. The store features thousands of books, a small sampling of those available through Amazon’s website.

But in a surprising announcement last week, Amazon confirmed that it is planning to open more brick-and-mortar stores. Some reports say “hundreds” more. All of which begs the question: Why, especially given the explosion of e-books in 2010 and 2011?

Because books still matter, and still make money.

“People talked about the demise of physical books as if it was only a matter of time, but even 50 to 100 years from now, print will be a big chunk of our business,” Markus Dohle of Penguin Random House told The New York Times last fall, as print books were still accounting for more than 70 percent of the company’s sales in the U.S.

Opening up more physical stores also might help to lower delivery costs for Amazon and streamline the delivery structure.

It also might be part of a larger trend toward a return of the retail location. Some companies, such as Warby Parker, formerly an online-only retailer, are opening retail locations. Not only is it about sales, but it’s advertising for the brand.

New Jersey-born author Judy Blume and husband George Cooper are part of the trend. “We just opened a bookstore!” Blume told MyNewJersey.com of her new shop in Key West, Florida. “There’s such a strong literary tradition here.” Blume’s shop is not far from the famous Ernest Hemingway home.

According to Blume, 75 percent of the business is tourists. “But they’re real readers, not simply beach readers. They’re buying wildly, and we talk to people from everywhere. I think it’s happening all over the country — people want a local, independent bookstore.”