Independent Bookstores: Victims of Changing Times

After 27 years, Bailey/Coy Books is closing down at the end of November. The Capitol Hill institution was a landmark not just for being an independent bookstore in the 21st Century (although that is an increasing rarity), but for actually having a niche market to cater to, in this case the neighborhood’s vibrant gay and lesbian community.

But Bailey/Coy wasn’t niche-exclusive by any means. Compared with many independents, which are often cramped with plywood shelves covered with dust and cat dander (some would say these are positive qualities), Bailey/Coy is/was clean, well-lit, and well-organized with a good selection of literature, arts and even nonfiction for a diverse crowd. Helpful staff with good recommendations made it an ideal drop-in place afterwork or on the weekend.

In a note posted on the store’s website, the reason for the shutdown is explained: “We have struggled, along with independent bookstores across the country, for the last decade to keep our bookstore profitable and healthy. The economic downturn of the past year, combined with the rapidly changing world of bookselling, has led us to believe that this is the most responsible decision.” The pending move of Elliott Bay Book Co. to Capitol Hill from Pioneer Square was apparently not a factor in the decision to close.

In other words, Bailey/Coy couldn’t compete with the chains, the big box stores, and Amazon. Bookselling has changed fundamentally. Independents are shutting down (my old stamping grounds, Boston, lost two of its iconic institutions in recent years: WordsWorth Books in Harvard Square couldn’t make it even with its 10-percent-off-list pricing for all trade paperbacks, and Avenue Victor Hugo in the Back Bay had one of the best selections of science fiction/fantasy, used and new, and couldn’t stay afloat; it closed its retail store and now deals exclusively online). The options for independents seeking to compete with the independents are to try and join the revolution (Powell’s Books in Portland) or delve even deeper into niche markets and/or used books. But even then there are chains that undercut the used book market.

It is especially sad that a week after Seattle Book Fest returned, albeit to a rather dreary converted school buidling in Columbia City, that we should be losing one of our marquee names. Yet the battle over books has more or less been decided; Amazon is here to stay. The biggest debate these days is what the effect of Google scanning all those out-of-print books from libraries will be.

Making the rounds of Bookfest, I talked with a lot of independent publishers who were barely holding on. With the expection of the larger Sasquatch Books and the nonprofit University of Washington Press, most publishers are undertaking the task out of love for books, and certainly not because there’s money in it. Producing a book to sell at a book fair is hard enough without also trying to get it into stores that won’t sell it, or getting it into Amazon where it will disappear into the rankings.

Are we destined to become a society where the small independents can’t survive? Where big business is the only business? It’s still a rearguard action. Two independent booksellers, Village Books in Bellingham and Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, are betting on the new Espresso machinenot a coffeemaker, but an in-store print-on-demand machine that will spit out a fresh, made-to-order book in about five minutes. A product of New York-based OnDemand Books, local publishers are looking to the Espresso as yet another way to compete against Amazon, to tap into the convenience of the internet and the economics of higher margins-per-square-foot (print-on-demand has different economics than volume orders, but eliminates much of the shipping and storage cost of 1,000 copies of a book that will mostly end up getting pulped.)

The machines are not cheap: stores need an outlay of at least $100,000 to get going, and then there’s feeding the machine with paper. But in this day and age, what else can a retail store do? It will be interesting to see how these initiatives play out. But they’re already coming too late to help Bailey/Coy, and the ghosts of independent stores already departed.