Photo by D. Weiss
October 2004
Survival Lit
For many local booksellers, the issue isn’t whether Seattle and the Puget Sound area support literature.
It’s about where we buy our books — and why. Our case for conscious book buying.
by Silja J.A. Talvi
Books changed my life. Odds are they changed yours too.
Reading is like rocket fuel for our perpetual-motion imaginations. As children, we are treated to free-spirited, ethical tales of awe and wonder. As we grow, so does our taste in literature. In time, we learn to grasp subplots, metaphors, sarcasm and mythological references. We recognize the lyrical possibilities of the written language.
Through books, we can dive into the realm of subversive surrealism, metaphysical mysticism or fixate on the impact of narrative nonfiction. We can travel without moving an inch.
That is, if the books are being read. These days, it seems like there’s never enough time to read everything that’s out there. (My stacks of unread books inspire a funny kind of guilt complex, as if they were ignored guests at a dinner party.)
For once, this isn’t just about my overactive imagination. There are an unbelievable number of books being published, most of which even the most avid reader is unlikely to recognize.
According to RR Bowker, the source of the authoritative Books in Print database, there were at least 175,000 new titles published in 2003. Here’s a statistic: Every 20 seconds or so, another eager author hopes, against the odds, to have his or her book noticed.
“Warehouses are bulging with books,” says Jamie Lutton, owner of Twice Sold Tales in Capitol Hill and Queen Anne. “It’s just astounding how many books are out there.”
Seattle appears more prepared for the literary onslaught than most major cities. Seattle and the Puget Sound area was recently ranked one of the most literate places in the country.
An August 2004 University of Wisconsin-Whitewater study officially ranked Seattle the second most literate city in the nation, right behind Minneapolis. (The lowest, you ask? Don’t mess with El Paso, Texas.) Cities were rated on a multitude of factors.
Booksellers are just one part of the “literate city” equation, but it’s an area where we excel. In Seattle alone, there are 109 non-chain retailers selling books, according to Thom Chambliss, executive director of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association (PNBA), based in Eugene, Ore.
That’s a lot of independent-minded thinking right here in the daunting shadow of Seattle-based online bookselling giant Amazon.com. But for many of these booksellers, the issue isn’t whether Seattle and the Puget Sound area support literature. It’s about where we buy our books, and why.
Getting on the same page
This is where we come in. As readers, do we want to keep those independent treasures? Maybe even build the count, such as, say, the new and enticingly homey-looking used bookstore about to be opened in Columbia City?
If the answer is yes — of course it is — then the next step is to get on the same page as local booksellers. Find your way to those stores — to buy books, attend a reading, sip on coffee, join a frequent-buyer plan, get on the mailing list, post your flyer or ask questions you aren’t going to be able to pose online about good reads.
Independent bookstores are doing their part with aggressive business plans and community-minded involvement. They support and present local authors who need some distinction among those three-every-minute book writers out there.
Make no mistake: Independent bookstores are in the battle of their fiscal lives with Amazon, Barnes and Noble and you-name-the-big-chain. The battle went geothermal when Amazon started up in 1995. Within months, dozens of local independent bookstores were feeling the heat and openly fretting about losing business to a virtual competitor with flashy graphics and warehouses to spare.
Plus, it was no small thing that Amazon has the capacity to buy from publishers at high volume — and to pass considerable savings on to their customers.
The public hand wringing about Amazon has died down a bit since the mid-1990s, although the company’s far-reaching success certainly hasn’t. These days, the site sells everything from Paris Hilton jewelry to toasters, making Amazon.com the equivalent of the Web’s superpower supermart, where books can be found on Virtual Aisle 1.
In the meantime, independent booksellers who have stayed in business say that they have learned to adapt to the snazzy corporate gorilla in their midst.
“My sense is those stores that might [have been] hurt by Amazon already have been,” explains Chambliss. “Some have gone out of business, others produced their own Web sites [for book buying] and others just adapted in other ways.”
View from Elliott Bay
Both Seattle’s Elliott Bay Book Company and Powell’s Books (headquartered in Portland) say that while tough times have been a reality for all independent bookstores, recent sales and attendance at readings are strong causes for optimism.
Neither Elliott Bay nor Powell’s can be considered small independents by any stretch of the imagination, but they predated the Amazon.com era by decades. The most well-known and widely respected independent institutions of Pacific Northwest book culture, Elliott Bay and Powell’s have been around for 31 and 33 years, respectively.
Both bookstores have helped to launch the careers of previously unknown authors, and Elliott Bay’s cozy downstairs reading room is a perennial favorite with writers and readers alike.
At these bigger stores, the Amazon shakeout has stabilized.
“People have determined whether they’re buying for discount or buying for service and a knowledgeable staff,” explains Tracey Taylor, general manager of Elliott Bay Books.
“As a private company, we’re operating with the same guidelines we always have,” says David Weich, director of marketing and development for both Powell’s and Powells.com, which celebrated its tenth year of operation this year.
In September, Powell’s tested Puget Sound waters with a book-buying expedition that was the talk of the book-buying town.
“It represents an attempt to gauge the bookselling market in Seattle and to replenish our supply,” as Weich puts it.
As for a satellite bookstore in Seattle? “We never say never,” he says.
If any brick-and-mortar stores were going to make it through the bookselling frenzy, Powell’s and Elliott Bay were the obvious choices. But many other independents were left wondering if they would, indeed, hang on even another month.
For some, Book Sense made all the difference. An organization started by the American Booksellers Association to promote “Independent Bookstores for Independent Minds,” Book Sense helped to reverse a declining ‘90s trend in indie bookstore sales by raising the profile of those stores, getting them online and helping owners to exchange information.
The organization now claims 1,200 members nationwide; out of those, roughly 500 bookstores now report their own bestseller lists to Book Sense. The organization then compiles national, regional and specialty genre data as a fresh alternative to the more staid and predictable New York Times bestseller lists. The reprinting of that data in 125 media outlets has reignited readers’ interest in new and unusual titles. See our own Dragonfly Bestsellers for a variation on the theme.
All of that is good news for independent booksellers. But chain stores, says Chambliss, are still doing real damage to the financial viability of independent bookstores. We readers can still come to the rescue by valuing the unique contributions made by our neighborhood bookstores.
According to Chambliss and many others, the biggest obstacle for indies revolves around the fact that corporate retailers, including Borders, Barnes & Noble, and the mega-wholesaler Costco, are able to offer books at low prices that the independents say they cannot beat.
“We can offer some discounts on bestsellers, but if we are going to stay in business, we can’t possibly match what the chain stores and online companies are [offering],” says Michael Wells, owner of Bailey/Coy on Capitol Hill.
Bailey/Coy, a Broadway fixture for 25 years, has earned a loyal book-buying clientele for its eclectic mix of pop culture, left-wing politics, edgy fiction, and extensive selection of gay/lesbian titles.
“We strive to match the quirkiness of our neighborhood,” laughs Wells, nodding in the direction of a new table display on books addressing “vices” like prostitution and drugs.
Wells and his well-read employees write out personal review cards on books, drawing on their academic experience and literacy on any number of subjects to inform Bailey/Coy customers about what’s worth checking out.
Spirit of book selling
East West Bookshop’s employees take their work just as seriously, turning their attention to spiritual, meditation and “conscious living” books and materials.
The big book retailers have made an impact on sales, admits manager Susan McGinnis, but East West Bookshop has adapted by emphasizing specialization over super-discounts.
“[We] have a very loyal clientele who come to East West because we know our subject area and are ourselves interested in it. And customers always tell us that they love the atmosphere here; they enjoy just being here,” says McGinnis. “We also offer many informational programs and book talks that have helped to keep us flourishing during this time.”
After September 11, McGinnis and other booksellers suffered along with the rest of the economy, as customers reigned in their book enthusiasm by only buying used books, turning to discount sales (hello, you’ve got Amazon) or simply buying fewer books at a time.
Twice Sold Tales’ Lutton points out that while the economy has stalled and struggled mightily for several years on end, new book prices have only gone up. A paperback in 1965 used to cost about a quarter, or roughly one-third of the hourly minimum wage. Today, the average paperback price (around $7.99) is equivalent to an hour of labor for minimum-wage workers. There’s an upside, of course: More people now turn to used bookstores for affordable reading material.
Yet even then, it’s not an easy business, Lutton is quick to point out, especially with Amazon.com and Half Price Books as competitors. Twice Sold Tales’ Capitol Hill location, for instance, recently had to downsize to be able to stay in business.
“I don’t fault [Half Price Books] for existing or being [located] down the street from me; it’s just that I pay fairly for books, and I’m old-fashioned like that. Our store policy is to let someone know if the book they have is really worth something and offer them a good price on it.”
Lutton’s deepest source of outrage stems more from the monopolization of
the industry by a handful of major publishing houses.
“Publishers control what’s published and how books are priced,” she says, “and those prices are artificially high.”
Booksellers’ complaints about publishing houses don’t end there. In fact, in the behind-the-scenes triangulation that exists among the independent bookstores, the corporate retailers and the bigger publishing houses themselves, there are plenty of accusations and retorts to go around.
On the part of independent booksellers, one of the chief complaints against companies like Amazon.com, Borders, and the world’s largest bookseller, Barnes & Noble, Inc. (the company publicly merged with Barnes & Noble.com in May 2004), is that they demand — and receive — bigger discounts for their large-volume purchases. Another problem is the indies can be left scrambling for adequate numbers of popular titles that have been bought up by the big retailers en masse.
Misplaced paid placements?
Independent bookstore owners (as well as smaller publishing houses) argue that chain bookstores accept high-dollar paid placements from the major publishing houses, often promoting mediocre “celebrity” books at the expense of less-hyped works of literature by more talented “mid-list” authors.
That’s an accusation that Barnes & Noble, Inc. CEO Steve Riggio emphatically denies.
“We do not accept payment for placement of any title under any circumstances,” Riggio writes in an e-mail interview. “Like all booksellers we earn cooperative advertising money. This money belongs to us and is used, with publisher approval, to promote and market books in a variety of ways.”
Furthermore, Riggio says, Barnes & Noble is absolutely not to blame for the lack of discounts at independent bookstores.
“Independents buy books at the same terms we do; if they choose to not discount books ... then they have decided to charge their customers more.”
The accusations are far more accurately directed at the “warehouse clubs,” adds Riggio, as they are the ones who “cherry pick publisher’s lists and carry only the proven titles.”
The industry is, in fact, awash in this kind of blame assignation. In a recent article in Publishers Weekly, for instance, unnamed publishers were quoted as saying that it was Amazon’s requests for volume discounts that really put them in a bind where smaller booksellers are concerned.
All the mudslinging aside, Seattle’s book indies appear to be here to stay. Profit is indeed the bottom line for nearly everyone involved. But, as Lutton puts it, it’s equally about savoring literature for everything it has to offer.
“I’m still in it to meet people who have a passion for books,” she says. “At the end of the day, I still know that’s why I do this.”
Silja J.A. Talvi is an award-winning writer based in Seattle. She is working on a book about women and prisons.
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