Watch out Amazon (okay, maybe not), the independent bookstores are coming!
According to the American Booksellers Association (ABA), things are beginning to look up for independent booksellers. The group's membership numbers rose by 55 over the past year from 1,512 to 1,567. This marks the third straight year ABA's membership numbers have gone up following years of large decreases as Amazon and Barnes & Noble put many independents out of business. At its peak, the ABA boasted some 3,000 members.
More importantly, independents are selling books. ABA CEO Oren Teicher cited Nielsen BookScan numbers which showed that association member stores had sold 13.4 percent more books year-over-year through May.
"We are more than holding our own," Mr. Teicher told The Associated Press.
Mr. Teicher and others point to a variety of reasons for the increase in book sales at independent stores including an improved economic environment, the demise of Borders and the emphasis on e-Books by the big two.
"It's down compared to five years ago, but it went down when the whole economy fell," Tom Jackson, co-owner of the Regulator Bookshop in Durham, N.C., told the AP. "It's since come back up and stayed up. Given what's been happening with digital books, the competition from Amazon and so forth, that seems pretty good."
Dan Cullen, a spokesperson for the ABA, told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that the buy local movement has also helped independents.
"People like to know their hometown has its own all-stars, and not just a more cookie-cutter presence," Mr. Cullen told the paper.
In Sarasota, FL, bookstores have recently opened with the owners believing they have identified niches that will allow them to compete in a brave new e-book world.
Barbara Barone has reopened Brant's Books, a 5,000-square-foot used book store that her mother used to run. When the Herald-Tribune caught up with her recently, she was in the process of shelving roughly 150,000 out-of-print titles offered for sale in her shop. Besides her store, Ms. Barone also makes her books available for sale through eBay and other websites.
"In this economy, you have to be flexible," she told the Herald-Tribune. "There is some guy in Russia who needs your book desperately and will pay for it. That is why internet sales are so important."
Ms. Barone conceded that e-books may be the future of publishing, but that there is a future for traditional printed titles.
"I am very fortunate that the inventory I have is just not Kindle-based," she told the Herald-Tribune. "Who wants to buy a gorgeous Picasso art book on a Kindle?"