anghara | On the subject of independent bookstores...

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On the subject of independent bookstores...

...one of

rdeck 's friends, Sherry Gottlieb, who once ran the original "A Change of Hobbit" bookstore, offered some fascinating - if discouraging - insight into the indie-vs-big chain discussion.

A couple of years ago, in response to a similar discussion (it never goes away, does it?) Sherry wrote, in part:

For 19 years, in the '70s and '80s, I was an independent bookseller, owner of A Change of Hobbit [which] grew to become the oldest and largest science-fiction and fantasy bookstore in the world. (When it closed in 1991, CoH [had] 75,000 books and magazines, selling not only to
the greater Los Angeles area, but also to mail order clients around the country and around the world.)

I saw firsthand what the big bookstore chains did to the independents, and Borders is one of the worst. Borders policy has always been, and is still: To find an area where a large independent
is doing well, move in, undercut prices, bring in expensive promotions subsidized by publishers, and drive the independent out of business.

Borders and other big chains ... get preferential discounts from the publishers, a radically better rate than that offered to independents... subsidized advertising, and first crack at major authors on tour.

The only ways that independents can hope to survive amid this onslaught are by:
* Specializing. When the chains began to use their preferential
discounts to undercut independents in the late '70s, early '80s,
almost every general independent in the Los Angeles area was forced
out of business. The ones who hung on were the specialists/genre
bookstores (SF, mystery, travel, children's books, etc.)
* Outstanding knowledge of books. Try to go into Borders and ask
the nearest clerk for a book you read once, but can't remember the
name of, and describe the plot -- chances are, they'll shrug and say
they need the title. Do that at an independent, and the clerk will
make guesses, call over everyone in the store and ask them, and do
their best to identify and find the book for you.
* Special orders and searches....Independents ... will do
searches for out-of-print books -- we even did it for OP paperbacks,
keeping a customer's request in the file until we found the book (our
record was 13 years).
* Selection. You have no idea what [chains] DON'T carry... the
chains have virtually killed any chance of a new author to get
"discovered" or even published. If the chains don't order heavily on
a book, publishers now kill the publication. Used to be that the
independents would "hand-sell" books they liked and develop a
groundswell of word-of-mouth that could make a new career.

..Pretty soon, you will be able to buy only what the big chains think you want.
Sherry Gottlieb

With the ever-shrinking short story market, and the vanishing of even the possibility of the mid-list, new authors are finding it increasingly difficult to break in - and those with even remotely original, unusual or "it is not immediately apparent to the accounting department how we would market this book" ideas are plumb out of luck.

Is it really our inevitable fate to settle into a future of books cloned from known bestsellers, written quite possibly by people hand-picked for their marketability rather than their writing skills or passion or vocation...? Even "Harry Potter" the phenomenon was rejected a number of times, which means that someone somewhere failed to see its phenomenological potential - but it was published anyway, given a CHANCE, and look what happened next. What if the next Harry Potter never gets that chance, because it's just that little bit different, that little bit unusual, considered just that little bit too risky an "investment" for the publishers?...

I would like to hope not. Every year I see a number of amazing books published, some of them by people I am proud to call friends. I am acquainted with a number of stellar editors whom I do not believe capable of being driven by bottom line alone, who would fight for something that they felt deserved fighting for. And yet... and yet.... ALL of this - wonderful writers, great editors - ALL of it bottlenecks in the marketing and publicity and sales department. Even those GIVEN a chance at a debut are given that chance at swordspoint - your first book don't sell, you're out, sweetheart. Forget about building a reputation or an audience. It's publish or perish in a whole new guise.

Writers - readers - booksellers - what think you?

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I won't try to deny the dark side of the big chains, but I just had a brief discussion with a reader who e-mailed me about the downside of independents. I remember the local independent bookstore that used to be near my house when I was growing up; it had maybe four bays of SF/fantasy, if that. Now I can go into a Borders or a B&N and find several rows of my genre, including manga and gaming books and comics and more. Honestly? My selection has gone up, not down, from what it used to be. I'm all in favor of the specialty stories like A Change of Hobbit (or my personal favorite, Pandemonium in Boston), but not all independent bookstores are (or were) like them. A lot were dinky little hole-in-the-wall places more akin to airport bookstores than cool specialty stores.

So yeah, there are problems with our current situation, no doubt about it. But -- dare I say it? -- some good has come with the bad, too.

I'm afraid that my memories of Indepdents are pretty terrible also. Rudeness from staff who didn't seem to believe a child knew what she wanted, refusal to order books for me, ordering the wrong book, or the first book in the series when I wanted the sequel. Book orders never takng less than six weeks. Never actually keeping sequels to series in stock so there was only ever the Dark is Rising on the shelves. Getting old enough to go into town and use the big chains was a liberation from this kind of treatment.

Generally I'd say "specalist Independents = Good". "Generalist independents = shudder."

One other factor tho': bookshops used to be unfriendly places, hostile to browsers. Borders did well at first simply because it recognised that the longer you kept a customer, the more likely they were to buy.

>One other factor tho': bookshops used to be unfriendly places, hostile to browsers.

Interesting. I've always thought of bookstores as pretty neutral, and that independents would be friendlier, but it has been dawning on me recently that my local independent sf-y store? Is actually a very chilly place, at least to me. Which is leaving me a little conflicted, because I want very much to support them and I think they do some great things. But I don't actually enjoy the experience of shopping there very much.

I don't think the short story market is shrinking. The print short story market may be shrinking, which isn't nearly the same thing. I would say "It's not a real market if it's electronic" is going the way of "It's not a real computer if it uses transistors instead of vacuum tubes." (Not quite that far, actually.)

Point. But while print media were available to anyone who had an envelope and a stamp - well - there may come a time when ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE owns a computer, but I don't think we're there yet. And speaking for myself I have to admit I still read very little online fiction except if someone literally steers me to a specific story at a specific site. I like my reading to be hand-held, on paper...

Here in the UK anyone can have access to a computer for free at the local library. But income really isn't a barrier, strangely. Because the value of second hand computers is very low, a lot of people get computers passed on to them by more affluent friends or relatives when they upgrade their own machine. Most of the pensioners I teach have their own computers, which are often machines donated by their grown up offspring who have now bought the latest super-duper model.

Also, I just wanted to mention that I am listening to far more short stories via podcast than I ever used to read when print was the main medium. I don't have time to read shorts, which need reading at a sitting to be appreciated properly, but I do have hours each week driving to and from work when I can listen to things.

Also I will read a short story on the web, perhaps during my lunch break at work, though I wouldn't consider reading a novel that way.

If short fiction is going to survive, I think it will be via online sites and podcasts not via print.

Might I ask where you find the short-story podcasts? I spend a lot of time driving too, and there are times when I'd prefer a story to music.

The one I get weekly is Escape Pod. This is an SF and fantasy podcast. The stories are available for free, though they encourage people to donate to support them. There is also Pseudopod for horror.

I have subscribed to Escape Pod via iTunes, so my iPod updates automatically, but there are various options to suit all types of MP3 players.

There are links to other podcasting sites on their page.

Thanks very much! SF/F is exactly what I was looking for; this is perfect.

swan_tower and

fjm - I take your point, and perhaps I was spoiled by always having had access to pretty good indies, and currently blessed by a really special one in my own town with which I've cultivated a nice relationship.

And yes, there IS the aspect of just wandering the stacks and browsing in a big chain.

And yes, I do remember days (back in my childhood, in Eastern Europe( where you walked into a booksop which had counters like an old-fashioned grocery shop and you had to ask for a specific book that you wanted and there would be little or no "browsing" and impulse buys going on.

All that being said, I see the difference between the "front tables" in my independent bookstore and the local B&N. The former contains topical non-fiction, novels by people with foreign names, books by local writers. The latter is covered by multiple copies of "The Heart Shaped Box", biographies of celebrities, and "The Secret".

In the four years since I've lived here, I've come to know the people in the indie store, and they know me, and they know what I like and who I am and several of them will make a point of greeting me by name if they see me in the store. In the same four years, the entire roster of people working with new book promotion and with the SF&F section in the Barnes and Noble has changed completely at least three times, and every time it does I am back at square one with the store - I don't know them, and they don't know me. And yes, they have more space than the indie store - but often this translates into having more copies of the latest Weber or Gaiman or the entire backlist of Douglas Adams rather than having a greater selection of stuff.

But thanks for the input from the flip side of the coin, ladies - this kind of discussion is precisely why I thrw this particular topic into the ring.

When I was growing up we had one market stall which sold Enid Blyton pbs and v little else and one bookstore which stocked dictionaries etc
which you visited when you had won a school prize.
My parents were in a postal book club (we would regularly get books we didn't want because they forgot to cancel them) and um that was the only
access to books I had locally outside the library.
Any one of the chains gives so much more choice than was available to me as a child.
Yep it's hard to make a living out of writing. In the UK the abolition of the net book agreement has made things much tougher for the writer, but I am not sure the consumer is suffering. There are still a hell of a lot of good books out there and there is always the internet.
(BTW I was amused to see our recent books linked on amazon earlier today- though I am selling rather lower volumes : ) )

Joe Hill started out in the short story market. His first "book" was published by a small press (the UK, PS publishing). I'm very proud to have been one of the judges who awarded him the Crawford for best First Fantasy Book before we caught on to whose son he was.

His presence at the front of B&N is a tesimony to the fact that B&N *can* "bring good books to the people" (as the old time socialists might have said) and not an indictment of their stocking policy.

For the record, I haven't read that particular book, and I don't know Joe Hill as a writer - I was not making a comment on his ability or talent. He IS, however, "book of the month" right now - the kind of book that gets the lion's share of media hype. This can descent on any book, whether its author is good, bad, brilliant or mediocre - it's just a focus for a media spotlight, you know what I'm talking about, the kind of book which you find practically wallpapering a store when you walk into one. "Jonathan Strange" was another. "Bridges of Madison County" was another. I'm sure you can insert your own example.

And the contents of the B&N "front table" are decided by corporate headquarters, which IS driven by such media hype as there is, and then perpetuates it even further by such placements, and certain books become snowballing runaway successes because of it.

Look, I'm not dissing Joe Hill here. If you prefer to discuss the phenonmenon using a different example, feel free - he just happens to be the current occupant, or at least one of them, of a particular niche right now. (With him, of course, there's always the open secret of his parentage, however much that is 'hidden" and tucked away - a certain percentage of people are going be curiosity buyers, interested in finding out if Son of King is a true heir...

If you want to use a bad book as an example you might have a point, but I can't see what's wrong with spending a fortune marketing the rather astonishingly good titles you have just mentioned.

Okay... how about... "Da Vinci Code"?...

Which I loathe but which my students love. Would they have read it without the hype? Possibly not? Would they have read another book? I doubt it.

But who gets to pick which books get hyped, and why...?

It's that person, or those people, who apparently control(s) what the greater reading public reads or doesn't read.

Let me put it this way. I realise that I am not exactly Everyman in this, but I'll wander into bookshops and actually BROWSE. I'll pick up books that are out on the remainder table and have a look at them. If the story appeals,I will buy it. If it doesn't, I will NOT buy it. It matters very little to me whether it's the #1 bestseller this week. But if only the hyped books get picked to be sold, I lose those gems that I might otherwise trip over all unexpected-like when I wasn't looking for them. I lose the authors who are not household names (but who are no less good because of that); I lose older books which are whisked off shelves far too soon to make room for the new big thing; I lose the quirky, the unexpected, the weird and the wonderful because those books won't sell in the millions and will therefore sooner or later get to the point where they aren't published at all because they are deemed "non-viable".

I would regret that.

Except that none of this is true: small presses are growing as fast as the large houses are conglomerating. Amazon and the internet generally have become our generation's book clubs. Publishing houses publish more books, and a wider list of books than ever before. Unfortunately, there are also more people trying to get published.

While the Bestsellers (a genre label, not a numbers description) cost money, if the publishers make money they can puiblish scarier authors. A friend of mine once asked me not to diss Terry Brooks, because publishing Terry Brooks paid for almost his entire sf list.

All of THAT is true, but it doesn't entirely invalidate what I said above.

"more people trying to get published" = another can of worms entirely - there were always people trying to get published, it's just that it's EASIER these days, or apparently easier, anyway - you pays your money and you takes your chances, after all.

Small(er) presses and more options where to buy and more books getting published = all good. But publicity budgets really aren't keeping up with demand, and this is yet another can of worms - how much of what used to be the province of publishers' publicity offices has been handed down to the authors these days? How much of their own publicity are authors expected to carry themselves? (From personal experience, quite a bit - and I've been the recipient of actual publicity budgets, unlike a friend whose Australian-published fantasy was picked up by a big US publisher and then assigned close to zero in terms of publicity budget so the trilogy came and went almost invisibly, not through lack of merit...)

Am I really so wrong when I say that money makes money, and that - IN GENERAL - more is spent on publicising books which are expected to bring in the MEGAmoolah than on publicising books which, er, might bring in MORE money if they WERE publicised?

Sure, I appreciate that it's a business. I'm in the industry, I know the realities. But publicity still means something. Look at that sorry Frey debacle - after Oprah touted him, after he was outed, after Oprah retracted the tout, THAT book remained on the bestseller shelves of our local bookshops for quite some time. Publicity is a juggernaut - once you put its weight behind something, it will keep it going, no matter WHAT happens along the way.

In some ways it's like the Oscars in Hollywood. Every year there's ONE movie that seems to be the main focus, and in that year THAT movie wins everything important. Other nominated movies, in a nod to the possibility that they too had merit, win awards for cinematography or costume design - all well and good, but who looks at those awards, or remembers them? The categories people look at and want to know about are Best Movie, Best Actor/Actress, possibly Best Original SOng. The rest... is smoke.

SOrry - these replies are getting to be longer than the original post...

oh, and, to the broader point - spending that fortune on one single title, no matter HOW brilliant, makes its success a self-fulfilling prophecy by the simple expediency of keeping said title in the public eye. The fortune spent on that title means very little, often zero, spent on publicising anything else - anything that isn't seen as likely to turn into an instant blockbuster. This is where the vexed question of the mid-list comes in, after all - the author of lavishly promoted books gets huge sales, and that one book can cement a career - an equally good author not chosen for the major push might have their first or second novel do less well - CONSIDERABLY less well, in terms of numbers of copies shifted, and that means a stake through the heart of THAT writer's career. The only difference might have been the promotion level applied. A book with full-page ads in glossy magazines and display bins in stores (all of which is publisher-paid-for) will probably do better than the book which might have three copies in the store, shelved spine-out in the higgledy-piggledy of the back stacks...

Um, no. Publishing is littered with stories of huge promotion budgets and lousy sales. There were several disasters last year. In contrast word of mouth is quite simply the best way to sell a book. Captain Correlli's Mandolin was a sleeper hit this way. So was the first Harry Potter. Frances Hardinge's Fly By Night got little publicity when it first came out two years ago, and just walked itself out of the bookshops. In contrast I know of at least two highly touted children's books that did rather badly (one was a celebrity author).

There are real issues with the mid-list, I'm not denying that, but there is no money=success equation. If there were, publishers would be an awful lot happier.

I agree I don't think the amount or the quality of stuff published is an
issue - a vast number of books are published each year and some of them are good. Some of the good ones even get promoted. I think more people have
access to more books too. I understand that Borders are thinking of quitting the UK because their huge floor space stores not making enough money.
A lot of good books don't get hype and a lot of good authors can't make a living but that seems to me to follow from the fact that there are more people writing and wanting to be read than there is market to sustain huge sales for every one. Worse still high discount sales make writing for a living more of a numbers game than ever.
Publishers make judgements about what they think will work in a competitive market and that seems to me to be their perogative. Book shops have got to be selective and apart form the
few brilliant specialist books shops generally the independants stock
a narrower if different range from the chains. The majority of published books do not make any kind of splash and sink quietly without trace. The world is not fair and there is no level playing field but I'm not finding it difficult to find something good to read.

I was expecting to be a minority of one here, and am surprised to find myself in such good company. My local bookstore was nothing special growing up, and rarely had much I wanted (fortunately, there was an excellent library 2 blocks away - we mostly just didn't buy books). And this was in a bookish city, that at one time had a whole street of bookstores. (Christopher Morley's book about Philadelphia and ASW Rosenbach's autobiography made me nostalgic for the city that was thereforty-some years before I was born.)I've had wonderful experiences with independent used-book stores since, and there's an excellent one in my old neighborhood (Changing Hands) that sells new as well as used and has lots of author appearances, but I never have met a new-book indie I was all that impressed with. The first time I walked into a Borders I thought I'd gone to heaven. And it wasn't just books; since getting interested in folkie music in college, I'd had a horrible time finding albums by people I liked, and Borders had a whole folk music section.

And now I can surf Amazon and find music by people like Archie Fisher or Alex Bevan (folk musicians so obscure even other LJ folkies haven't mentioend them) and I can buy books by not only obscure people but also the real people I "know" on LJ. I'm not convinced this hurts the publishing market; I suspect that Amazon, by virtue of volume, can afford to stock books a local retailer couldn't, because only one person in a town might buy that book, but Amazon sells to a much wider range.

Which is not to say it doesn't have a dark side, too; one thing I worry about is that in Amazon's drive to sell every possible sort of product, they'll lose the focus on books that made me appreciate them so. Ever try to buy clothing there? The search engine is horrible for that - but I can find any book or CD I want in just a few clicks. I hopep that last part never changes, and as far as I'm concerned they can leave the other products to someone else.

You know, I think Amazon has become (dare I say) the new local bookstore. By that I mean it has everything (or can get it for you), people you trust recommend books to you, and everyone has a near-equal chance of selling due to those recommendations and availability. I suspect it takes a bigger bite out of B&N and Borders than out of the independents.

That's an interesting take, and I can see how it might apply - for those of us who make our home out here in the cyberworld, places like Amazon ARE the friendly neighbourhood bookstore...

And further: the local second-hand book store is also on the net - it's Ebay.

Hear, hear, hear! One tip was left out, and that is for all of us writers to encourage bookbuyers to patronize independent booksellers whenever possible.

I believe, also, that the independent presses will save our genre, in much the same way as the independent film companies injected new life and creativity into the movie business. We need to promote those smaller presses whenever we can, also. And buy their books!

The chains, Barnes&Noble stores in particular, like most behemoth corporations, can be and almost always are a destructive force, compounded by their direction from a central czar in a distant city. There is is too little community input to these giants.

When I was doing an article for an alternative weekly in Florida about the influence a new B&N was having on local independent bookstores (it wiped them out)I tried to get a comment from the local B&N manager. He wouldn't even come to the phone. His secretary told me that all comments to newspeople had to come from the pr office in New York.

[Have Alma will tell you sometime about the time I bad mouthed B&N in their coffee shop.[g] ]

I love the theory of independent bookstores, but in practice, I've always done most of my shopping at chains. Except when I was in grad school and shopped at the Harvard Bookstore (not affiliated with the university). Loved that place, especially the used and remaindered sections.

Then I moved, and my new local independent...I hardly shopped at, and gladly shopped at the Borders that opened up nearby when they closed, where they had lots of SF and the staff were helpful and friendly.

When I was a kid, the local independent was very small and had one shelf of SF. A big treat in our family was going downtown to the Bookstop, which was built in an old movie theater and was HUGE. Now there are several bookstores that size near my parents' house.

In the town where I live now there is a Waterstones, a WH Smith with a large book section, a brilliant and well known independent children's book shop, and two further independents both of which are slightly quirky
and not the easiest people to do business with. I just went into one
in the neighbouring small town about twenty minutes walk away. The guy running it admitted that he never saw any reps and only knew what was around by walking into the chains and having a look! He didn't have time to look at catalogues.
A good independent is fantastic with knowledgeable staff and a real
interest in books - a bad one - well I very much doubt that the one I visited today will still be a book shop this time next year.

What a great topic, Alma!!

I like what Sherry had to say, however, my experience is similar to others in indie bookstores -- cold, dusty and unfriendly. I would love to find an indie bookseller like 'A Change of Hobbit'! I remember a movie once where one of the main characters had a indie children's book store and was bought out by a big chain. She then went to work at the big chain and heard so many customers complain that it wasn't like her store at all and that she should have tried to keep hers open. Of course, remembering the movie name is impossible for me :o(

I still believe that we, as writers, encourage others (writers and readers alike) to patronize indie booksellers whenever possible. Readers and writers alike should strive to make that personal connection with the people working in these indie stores as well. It's the personal connection that will make that indie store special! Perhaps we can help create clones of 'A Change of Hobbit' all around the world ;o)

I believe that independent presses will save our genre to some extent and will hopefully force some more great writing into the mainstream. Wouldn't it be great if some of us were discovered because we originally used an indie press? I believe that we should promote the indie presses and buy their books whenever we can.

As far as reading, I far prefer 'in my hands' books and have very little interest in reading them online. I'll read a short story, maybe, but that's about it. I like the smell and feel of books :o)

As far as the big chains go, it gives me lots and lots of choices, but not always what I want to choose from. These days I walk in and have a hard time finding something to read. I go in thinking to buy a book of one genre and come out with something else entirely because nothing on the shelves of that genre sounded interesting, or I wanted to start from the beginning of a series character instead of the middle (they don't stock the older books I guess).

A good independent is hard to find. Many folks drool at the thought of Portland, and Powell's, but....heretic that I am, I don't spend much time at Powell's any more. Location, parking, and just plain trying to find what I'm looking for. So big that there's no time to just browse a different variety. And, surprisingly, often Powell's doesn't have an eclectic book I'm looking for.

That said, I spend a lot of my book money these days at a small independent on Mt. Hood, in Welches, called the Wy'East Bookstore. They promote the local authors, they have some marvelous artwork for sale, they promote small presses, they run an Internet cafe, and they run a UPS shipping outlet. And, oh yeah, 15% off all books.

The selection isn't Powell's, by any extreme, but I can usually find something interesting. I go to Powell's when I'm looking for specific books of certain types that might not be available other places.

I am insanely fortunate.

I live in a college town in Northern California that has a Borders, one healthy independent with brains *and* balls, two college bookstores, two used bookstores and one thriftshop with a decent battered-book selection. All within a mile-and-a-half radius. When Debbie goes out with her friends, they have hard decisions to make - do they hang out at Borders, The Avid Reader, Sweetbriar, Bogeys, go to the SPCA thrift to look at books *and* clothes, or just go home and re-read their anime stuff before doing their homework?

This particular Borders because of the reality of Davis CA, hires mostly college students or local kids. Most of the time they at least have an idea of what the books are. And frequently Jeff and I will go to Borders, check out the contents of a book, and if we like it go and order it from Avid. (Or get on line at AbeBooks and order it from one of the independents that way.)

I had nothing but Independents as a child, and they always liked me. Maybe I'm just weird. :)

...Blanche

My experience is like yours. A childhood in the hinterland of one college town (that is, El Sobrante, walking distance to Berkeley if you were determined, as my brother was), and an adulthood in another (Santa Cruz). Our list is like yours: several independents and -- well, we've got Borders. Crown tried and failed, and Barnes and Noble tried and failed.

I never had the surly and ignorant bookseller experience, myself. The one small town with a single small bookstore I have experienced is Watsonville. Thirty years ago their one bookstore was sort of lefty (though the guy who owned it has become an irritating wingnut in his old age). When that went out of business their one bookstore was a teacher store. And now it's just a cozy little generalist store. They don't carry a lot of things I would be lookign for, but they're very pleasant and they will order things if you ask them to, or refer you to the other stores in the county.

But lately my favorite used book buying has been at the Watsonville Sallies-- they have an astonishing collection of fairly recent sf.

Writing in the
<http://news.shelf-awareness.com/ct.jsp?uz2922231biz3976114>Guardian,
onetime Bookseller editor Nicholas Clee states:

"Borders and Waterstone's are in a bind. As critics argue, they ought
to be able to present themselves as specialists, offering ranges that
their supermarket rivals cannot match. But they are too large to
afford to be seen to ignore the bestsellers. So they have to promote
Peter Kay and Jamie Oliver and Martina Cole as well, even though they
struggle to compete with the prices offered by Tesco [the grocery
chain] and Amazon. The market, determined by discounts, compels them
to lose money.

"The troubles of Borders and Waterstone's could be good news for
independent booksellers that offer refreshing alternatives to the
homogenised offerings of the chains. Many book buyers support them as
a matter of taste and principle. But taste and principle have only
limited effectiveness in competition with ease and range (Amazon) and
cheapness (supermarkets, the chains--and Amazon). The best
independents, and those lucky enough to operate in areas away from
heavyweight competition, are doing well. For others, the market is tough."

In don't know. I live in a small city, a college town, and we have several independent bookstores and chain stores have not done well here except for Borders. Our independent bookstores are generalists. What's happening in other college towns?

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Heya, Alma.

Re: Heya, Alma.

Here's another view

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