Guest Post: A Sad Place Indeed

The fate of your local independent bookseller

A closing down bookshop is a sad place indeed.

At the time of my writing this, New Edition in Fremantle has just closed its doors. (Sure, it will be opening again in eight weeks, in a new location and under a new owner, and a rose by any other name, right?) To the avid book-buyer, it’s another year, another closure. We all remember the scenes a few years back when Borders and Angus and Robertson both closed their doors almost simultaneously, and like vultures we descended on the carcasses to buy up the remaining stock at a fraction of the retail price. It was the same when Dymocks in High Street closed, and again when the Elizabeth’s Second Hand bookshop closed next door to it a few months after. For the people of Perth, statistics on bookstore closures are beginning to play out before our eyes.

 

An article on bookstore closures published on the website Crikey in 2011 had the following to say on the matter;

In 2009, the number of Australian bookshops stood at about 2270. Following the REDgroup administration, and other shop openings and closures, we know that this figure is now about the 2000 mark.[1]

Today, that number would be even less.

And is it really surprising, given the attitude of the average consumer?

Before I get on my soap box, I have to make the following addendum. I am a bookseller at one of Western Australia’s most famous Independent Bookstores. Under previous bookstore management, the shop has won numerous award for being the best bookstore in the state. Under the current management, i.e. Me, we have done our very best to make sure that the necessary supplementing of book sales with café items, scarves and trinkets does not over-run our main purpose. We are a team of people who love the written word, and like literary matchmakers, we want to pair up lonely novels with the readers who will love them. The average book consumer is usually sympathetic to our cause. I don’t not want you to think that I have become jaded, but I have observed the following trends which I think may have contributed to the depressing slump in profitability of independent bookstores and bookstores in general.

Number one, the average consumer believes that the retail price of books is too expensive. Fair enough. In my own life, I live by a C.S. Lewis like philosophy, that when I get a little money I buy books and if there is something left over then, hooray I can eat (or, you know, buy shoes.) A new release fiction title can be anywhere from around $16.99 (young adult) to $49.99 (hardback.) The Tim Winton novel which was released this Christmas past retailed for $45, and it was BIG. Understandably, a lot of budget conscious consumers said ‘No Thankyou’ to the expensive tome and went with a nice paperback instead. But if we put this in the context of what we spend on other things, the price of books rising is the same as price increases for anything else. Can anyone else remember when going to the cinema cost around $10? Less? I can. Now I’m lucky to get in for less than twice that, seeing as I’m no longer a student.

Linked to this point is point number two: the average consumer believes that they can get the book cheaper somewhere else. The consumer believes that they can get the book cheaper online. I’m going to go ahead and assume that the person we’re talking about in this scenario actually has no idea of the economic impact their online shopping habits have on the local economy. Heck, I used to shop on Book Depository all the time. It was so easy. I could choose my cover, and I just loved getting all those little individual parcels in the mail. But I didn’t really think about the fact that every sale I sent overseas was a sale denied to local shops. Add to this the fact that lately, I’ve noticed a rising amount of ‘show-roomers’. You know who you are. You come to the shop with your friends, and you pull books off the shelf, and you show them to your friends and you say “This is great, but you can get it so much cheaper on Amazon.” Yes, but what is the human cost? That’s right, it’s my job. And I don’t even want to go into how little writers make out of the deal.

Number three; people seem to just love their Kindles. I can’t understand this myself. I’m horrified by my own attachment to my iPhone, and can’t fathom transmuting the act of reading— a lovely, meditative activity— and putting it on a cold, lifeless screen. But, people are busy, and books attract dust, and you never have to worry about the nasty bookseller telling you that the book you need for your book club tomorrow (that you should have bought a month ago when you found out what it was) is going to take two weeks to get in, because it’s several years old and the warehouse is in Melbourne. But the main joy of bookstores is your ability to browse in them. If you’re not browsing, you’re missing out. With Kindles, with Amazon, with Book Depository (sorry, old friend) you usually have to know what you’re looking for, unless you’re prepared to scroll through pages and pages of best sellers to choose something that hundreds of other people have chosen before you. There is no bookseller, no golden gatekeeper to press a tome into your hands and say, “Here, I loved this and I think you will too.” There is no moment of discovery when you are walking through the shelves and something jumps out at you to say, “I have been waiting for you.” Just the other day, as I vulturized the husk of New Edition, I discovered a copy of Georgia Blain’s The Secret Lives of Men, a book I had never heard of but that appealed to my particular interest at this time in my life. I challenge you to find that book on the first 100 pages of the Book Depository recommendations.

Next time you want to buy a book, I want you to think about what you love most about reading. All these things are things that your local bookseller shares with you. This love is infused in the full shelves, in the staff recommendations, and in the monthly newsletter that someone goes to the trouble of making for you. If your local bookstore closes down, your world might just become a darker place. Bookshops are forever, not just for sometimes.

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[1] http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/07/27/life-after-redgroup-crikey-maps-the-bookshop-massacre/

(photo credit: Mark McGovern)

Emily Paull is a bookseller by day and a writer by night. She has a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in English, Creative Writing and History. Emily blogs at The Incredible Rambling Elimy.