Culture may close the book on shops

The computer system at Cody's Books on Telegraph Avenue, a few blocks from the UC Berkeley campus, told him to ship back Emmanuel Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason."

"When one of the greatest works of Western philosophy, if not the greatest, wasn't selling at Cody's, there's something wrong," said Ross, who announced last month that the store, a legendary locus for Berkeley's free-speech spirit, would close July 10 after a half-century.

"I haven't figured out all the implications. If I do, I'll probably get more depressed than I already am."

Ross and many other independent booksellers in the Bay Area share a common lament over a grim or nonexistent future for some of the most cherished havens for book lovers and strongest venues for visiting authors.

Many cite Amazon.com and the proliferation of big chain bookstores. But there are other factors, they say, that have piled straw on the backs of businesses that face thin profit margins and stiff competition from discounters. They range from the dot-com blowup to bad city planning, to a societal turn toward laptop literacy.

"It's no one thing," said Neal Sofman, who announced last week that he and the other owners of A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books would pull the plug on their acclaimed store at Opera Plaza in San Francisco as soon as it liquidates its inventory.

In Menlo Park, 50-year-old Kepler's Books shut down last year, then was saved by a group of investors who could not bear the loss of a cultural and literary hub with a long history of progressive thought. Several other bleeding indies are shrinking, closing stores or looking to sell.

"One thing that a lot of people overlook is the competition from places like Wal-Mart, Costco and Safeway," said Carl Hammarskjold, a manager at Black Oak Books, which this month closed its store in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood.

"I was in the Safeway in Sonoma, and they had Noam Chomsky for sale. When you start seeing that, you know some of the edge the independent bookstore had is fast fading."

For decades, both Cody's and A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books drew a wealth of talent, famous and newly discovered, along with celebrity authors. Fewer major independents could mean publishers send authors to the Bay Area less often, or for less time.

"They are major event venues, and major destinations for visiting authors," said Michael Barnard, owner of Rakestraw Books in Danville, which has hosted the likes of Calvin Trillin, Sebastian Junger and Salman Rushdie.

"Their presence ... helped keep visiting authors in the Bay Area for several days and contributed to the viability of local book selling, local book culture."

Independent booksellers tout their personalized service, support for local authors and a willingness to stock their shelves to the tastes of the communities they serve.

The losses could have further implications on literary discovery, booksellers say. Indies have helped launch the writing careers of mystery suspense writer Scott Turow, John Grisham and Charles Frazier, author of "Cold Mountain," to name just a few.

Local stores often become community hubs, places to meet, talk and linger. Some, such as Book Passage in Corte Madera, have helped propel writing careers through conferences and salons.

Linda Watanabe McFerrin, an Oakland fiction and travel writer, credits conferences there with helping her meet talented writers and push her career. She credits Barnes & Noble and Borders with bringing books to places without them, but she also said the independents offer something else.

"A bookseller like Cody's or Book Passage doesn't just participate in the scene. They help create it," she said. "They are actually generating the literary culture. They're not just serving it, and that's very, very different."

Elaine Petrocelli, owner of Book Passage, said the loss of Cody's and A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books "breaks my heart."

"It's an ominous situation, because it says to me the public has not been shopping at those stores in the way (the stores) need to continue to be viable," she said. "When Kepler's closed, the people on the Peninsula said, 'We can't let this happen.' But they had let it happen."

Book Passage faces a planned 28,000-square-foot Barnes & Noble within a block. Those plans have prompted a community outcry in Corte Madera. The store has turned to a member-friend program, similar to those run by museums and other nonprofit groups, for financial support.

Geography was partly to blame for the demise of Cody's on Telegraph and A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, the owners said.

In Berkeley, Ross counted a deteriorating Telegraph Avenue among the key reasons why Cody's suffered there, losing $1 million in the past five years. Ross also suspects that college students, his bread-and-butter market, are reading fewer scholarly books. Two other Cody's stores, on Fourth Street in Berkeley and a new one in San Francisco, remain in business, and he hopes to shift author readings and other events there.

Sofman hearkened to a dot-com boom that drove out a chunk of San Francisco's art community, then the bust that sapped the city's commercial occupancy; an increase in city parking ticket fees that scared off customers around the Civic Center; and a nettlesome homeless problem there.

Hut Landon, executive director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, painted a less grim picture of the climate for indies, saying those two stores had unique problems.

Nearly a decade ago, the rise in online book sales and chains took out many struggling local stores, but the indies have adapted and their numbers have remained fairly steady over the past few years, he said. The American Booksellers Association counts about 1,700 members, down from about 3,500 in 1990, he said. His group has stayed at 235 to 250 members for a few years.

The indies that succeed now tend to be smaller, neighborhood shops with smaller staffs and lower overhead, he said.

"I don't want to say we're not losing anything, but I do not see this as the beginning of the end," said Landon. "The phrase we use is 'Flat is the new high.' If you can maintain, then you're fine."

"Like Google's plan to digitize the world's copyright-free books," he said. "It may be in the not-too-distant future that there is no such thing as an out-of-print book. If nothing's out of print and nothing's hard to find, all books will be $6."

That may bode well for Internet-savvy readers, he said, but could spell doom for the local bookstore.

This just makes me want to run a business analysis and see what their problem *really* is. Gosh, it's been a long time since I've done that!

I like to go to the bookstore with a notepad and write down the titles I want to order at the library :-).

OK--will check it out. Right now I've started "Foucault's Pendulum" (late to the party) and I have discovered one nice thing about the nexus of technology and the Good Read...it's mighty convenient to have wikipedia and dogpile running on wireless next to the chair while reading "F'sP"--there are piles of arcane cultural references which would otherwise leave me in the dust.

The computer system at Cody's Books on Telegraph Avenue, a few blocks from the UC Berkeley campus, told him to ship back Emmanuel Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason."

The thing had sat too long on the shelf.

Maybe Immanuel Kant is selling like hotcakes and the computer just got the spelling wrong.

Or maybe the rascally Randians are behind it all.

I can unequivocally state you are wrong.
I have and have friends who have read entire ebooks.

Now if you were to say most people don't, or that they are not popular yet, that would be a fact I could not argue with, but I can state, and prove with 100% certainty that some people do read ebooks.
Respectfully

" Not to argue, but maybe quibble a little, Queen Adrienne rules, and Honor makes sure it stays that way! ;) "

Oops, my bad. Let me restate it: Honor Harrington kicks some serious tail. I read less and less SF as time goes by but Weber truly combines much of what there is to like about Forester and Heinlein; duty, honor, country great understanding of military tactics (and how politics can drive them) and characters with character.

Don't you mean this one?

(The Free Republic version, no doubt...)

Cheers!

I've often thought someone should open one catering to "righty's". Might work...might not but it's worth a try.

Before my time, the John Birch society used to have a chain. I forget its name.

I'm in the "read it online" or "order it more efficiently on-line" categories now. My tastes are so arcane I know that B&N typically won't have a copy in-stock.

Some public libraries have recent books free on-line through companies like NetLibrary. The better programs let you access the books from home. I'm re-learning a programming language using their system.

"Oops, my bad. Let me restate it: Honor Harrington kicks some serious tail."

No argument from me there. I still like Heinlein's juveniles, but his "adult" material got way too adult for me. I prefer my pornography in braille, and rather seriously monogamously. We recently decided (spouse and I both) that we didn't need that trash around the house anymore, and dumped several copies (we normally have two or more of each book we really like) in the garbage where they belong. My, how tastes change as you grow up. (Or maybe just as you grow older, I suppose. Not that it looks like it worked that way for RAH...)

The popularity of audiobooks will grow with an aging population of bibliopaths who will no longer be able to read text visually, and will have to rely on them for their literary fix.

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