The Death of Bookstores

Cafe Society
1

It was pretty hard to miss the mass die-off of major bookstore chains, indie bookstores, and even used bookstores after about 2000. Even in Boston and Cambridge, the sudden disappearance of scads of the used bookshops that used to line Harvard Square and Beacon Hill was hard to miss. Places that had been around for ages seemed to simply evaporate, leaving only a precious few, like the Brattle Bookshop, behind. The only Penguin Books I saw in the US, between Central Square and Harvard Square, disappeared, as did Asian Books, he Globe Map Store, Wordsworths, and Paperback Booksmith. The entire chain of Borders books took a bit longer to disappear, but it did, along with Lauriat’s books and other chains. Barnes and Noble and BAM/Books A Million still survive as chains, and several independent bookstores, like Harvard Books are still around. College bookstores, of course, are still there, although mostly run by B&N including, I’m told, MIT’s branch of The Coop (The Harvard Cooperative Society), although I think that the Harvard Square main store is still not B&N. With the closing of the Barnes and Noble branch in the Prudential Center, that shopping mecca is without a bookstore since it first opened (the had a Brentano’s then).

All of this, I’ve been told, is the result of everyone buying online, mainly from Amazon. That killed used book stores almost completely, wiped out most chains, and wrought havoc on indie bookstores.

So why is it that when I visited Goettingen in Germany, the center city is rife with both new and used bookstores.? I know it’s a college town, but so is Cambridge MA (with Harvard, MIT, and nearby Tufts). yet there are definitely more used bookstores in Goettingen than in Cambridge. And there are both chain bookstores and independent ones. Lots of ‘em. Again, more than I know of in Cambridge, o even in Cambridge + Boston (if you ignore college bookstores).

So howcum? Germany’s got the internet, and they definitely use it as heavily as the US. Why do they get to keep their open-for-browsing and instant gratification bookshops and we don’t?

2

We still have a few used indie bookstores where I live, in Bend, Oregon. There are three downtown alone (which is only like 6 blocks big) and several more scattered through town. That’s on top of a huge Barnes and Noble.

There were also a few nice ones in Chicago when I last lived there, and Seattle and Portland too.

As for Europe, don’t they typically have higher urban density, cheaper cost of Healthcare (affecting labor availability), a culture of walking and transit, and more leisure time in general? Their downtown cores are often thriving in many ways ours aren’t, not just in terms of bookstores.

3

Well, one point that might be of relevance is that, as I understand it, all new books sold in Germany must be sold for the same price, by law. So Amazon cannot undercut the local retailer. Without that price savings, there wasn’t the massive switch to online book buying that drove the booksellers out of business.

Most of Europe has similar laws. Fixed book price - Wikipedia

4

Physical books, even if bought from online retailers, you’d think would still drive the used bookstores. But Kindle et al. would not.

5

Not necessarily so. Amazon sells used books through it’s site. In addition, you have Alibris, Abe books, and similar sites. Online used book stores have the advantage of low overhead, and they can often stock a wider variety of books, and don’t have to display them. I know from experience that it’s much easier to get a particular used book online than it is to search through physical used book stores. So it’s not surprising that the internet killed the used book stores before the new ones.

6

I suspect it’s because they actually bought from those stores, Amazon be damned. We could have done the same, but people voted with their wallets/time/convenience. That’s how democracy manifests in a hyper-capitalist society.

7

The death of the American bookstore may have been exaggerated.

Locally our town had lost a large chain bookstore (Borders), a large local independent chain, and a children’s bookstore. One new local independent bookstore had opened and sustained us for years then their owners decided to move on.

This year two local independent stores have opened and Barnes and Noble is signed up to open in the huge space that had been Borders.

Turns out we are not special as a community. Bookstores aren’t dead yet. They were just resting afterall. And they have lovely plumage!

I use my 23 year old daughter as my best bellwether, much more than any of my boys ever were, and if so it is weirder yet: she actually goes to the library! And believe me it ain’t that girl is super thrifty.

8

We have a few things that help us.

  1. Barnes and Noble has one store by us.

  2. We have a great “used book” store by us.

  3. Slightly related: We have a Disc Replay for perusing movies and video games at great prices. All used.

My kids, especially my daughter, like going to look at stuff. Actual stuff that you can pick up and look up.

9

I don’t think the loss is exaggerated at all. I was there. It was very sweeping and very real.

That not all bookstores were wiped out doesn’t disprove it, nor the return of a few indie bookstores. I’ve seen several now ones, but I’ve also seen several new ones die off recently, too.

As for saying we could have prevented it, but we’re too lazy and got it all from Amazon – way to blame the victim. I know plenty of folks who prefer being able to go into a bricks and mortar store and browse. The Germans are no more virtuous than we are. I’m more inclined to blame the lack of the equal pricing law in the U S.

10

I think the difference between the US and Europe is that in the US - big chain bookstores moved in and dominated the industry, causing a lot of small independent bookstores to fail. Then Amazon came along and did the same thing to the big chain bookstores, creating a huge hole in the physical bookstore landscape. Small, independent bookstores are making a comeback, however. In Europe, those independent bookstores were never wiped out by a series of big chains in the first place, and so were less sensitive to the arrival of online sales.

11

Yep, lack of equal pricing law is the culprit. I remember a lot of people bragging about browsing at brick and mortar bookstores to find out what they liked, leaving without buying anything, then buying the books they liked online just to save money. It used to piss me off to no end because I knew the bookstores would be gone because of it. Fucking cheapskates. They killed my favorite hangout pass time of browsing a nearby bookstore.

12

Several years ago I went to buy some expensive photography books at Barnes & Noble and was surprised to find that their shelf price was much higher than their online price.

I really wanted to buy the book from them, but it was like $50 in the store and $30 on their own website.
I asked the manager about this and she kept a perfectly straight face as she told me about the expense of maintaining a brick and mortar store so we can enjoy the experience.

…but it was their own website! It wasn’t like I was showing her Amazon’s prices, I was asking her to match Barnes & Noble’s website prices, and she couldn’t, and looked at me as if I was the one who was in the wrong.

Because of that act, I stood there in the store and ordered the books from Amazon on my phone.

That attitude really doesn’t help the physical store.

13

There is no victim here. There is the market response to what consumers actually want as expressed by demand.

Right now the market is expressing that there is a place for brick and mortar bookstores. And for on line booksellers. And e books. Even as we overall read less.

14

Europe is not uniform. In France, FNAC did wipe out a lot of small stores, and France being Paris and the province did not help either. But FNAC never could land in Germany, mostly because the equal pricing law (which FNAC did not believe applied to them, because whatever, and if we can do it in France we can do it everywhere*). Belgium went the France way, Spain did not so much, but Spaniards read rather little (old joke: the best way to keep a secret in Spain is to write a book about it). Eastern Europe is completely different again.
But yes: equal pricing, where it exists, is a great help to small book retailers. And a good thing too. It also helps small publishers, who don’t have to sell to the big chains at a discount. Which in turn helps the authors.

* I happened to know at the time the interpreter who did that job for the French way back last century. FNAC really did not believe they had to respect the law. But they did. There seems to be no FNAC in Germany now.
From the wikiarticle linked above:

In 1974, the company began selling books at 80% of the recommended retail price, sparking protests from publishers, writers and independent booksellers alike, who could not benefit from the economies of scale. This prompted government action in 1982 with the so-called ‘anti-Fnac’ law, that was signed to limit discounts on books to a maximum of five percent.

Five percent is still too much in a low margin environment.

BTW; as Barnes & Noble have come up repeatedly, this Substack caught my eye a couple of years ago:

15

A lot of those German bookstores WERE chains , just not mega-chains like B&N or Borders.

16

I’m definitely a victim here. And the market forces seem more likely to be dictated by a country’s price rules than by consumer greed and laziness.

17

Declining American Literacy Rates are a big part.

Many HS kids cannot read well enough to enjoy a paperback book.

18

Not so sure about that - the US still tops the list in # of books read per year.

19

We have a few book stores around. I loved going to them, but for me the last nail of the coffin was the ridiculous price for magazines. If I am going to drop $20, it’s for a permanent book, we are no longer talking bathroom material. No magazines, no impulse purchases, no reason to go to a brick and mortar store over having exactly what I want delivered to my door for cheap.

I can’t be the only one who liked going to book stores when they had no idea what they wanted.

20

Number, or number per capita? Total number is a useless bit of junk disguised as information.