Technology puts squeeze on booksellers

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This article was published 27/06/2011 (5344 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s a battle of epic proportions.

The fight is far from over but in Brandon, as independent booksellers go up against sexy digital options and big-box-store discount prices it appears a losing battle. Mom and pop bookstores are disappearing.

After 29 years in business, The Lighthouse Bookstore closed its doors Saturday, just weeks after downtown bookseller Pennywise Books was shuttered in its sixth year of business. This fall, The Story Garden Bookshop will also bid farewell to its storefront on 18th Street.

"The trend is, and you see it all over the place that independent stores are closing," Albert Loewen of The Lighthouse Bookstore told the Sun. "I think independents have always been at a disadvantage. This business goes back 29 years … and we’ve seen a lot of different trends but none have been this difficult."

Changing technologies and the growing popularity of e-books have been the ultimate game-changers in recent years. Although Lighthouse catered to a niche market, the advent of podcasts, YouTube videos and the ability to buy books direct has chipped away at yearly revenues. It also means people are reading less, Loewen says.

"The main thing that got the ball rolling for the decline in publishing was what I call ‘the Walmart factor.’ Where all of the sudden the price of a book wasn’t the price of a book and everyone thought a book had to be 20, 30 or 40 per cent off," Loewen said. "We had loyal customers but then you have a lot of people who are more price-conscious. It’s just the way the book industry has gone."

The largest online retailer in the U.S., Amazon, announced in May that its e-book sales had overtaken the combined sales of print books by about five per cent.

From February through April of this year, Amazon reports that for every 100 hardcover books it sells, it sells 143 Kindle books; this is not counting free downloads available to customers. The Kindle store offers more than 630,000 books, with 510,000 priced at $9.99 or less. In the U.S., Amazon e-book sales tripled in the first half of 2010 compared to the previous year and its growth rate in the first five months of 2010 was higher than the 207 per cent increase, the American Association of Publishers reports.

Those staggering statistics are nearly impossible to compete against, Loewen says.

"There are so many different factors now, whereas as an independent you used to be the only place to get certain books. Now when you’re just the certain piece of the overall pie, you have to have a certain volume to pay the bills," he said. "And every year that volume goes down."

Pennywise Books has aspirations to revive its business online — the very medium that contributed to its demise

"I’m not being forced into closure by any means. It’s just that the book industry is going through a lot of changes and things are getting tighter. I was having to do more work to tread water," Pennywise owner Keith Edmunds told the Sun this spring.

For remaining independent booksellers like George Strange’s Bookmart in Brandon and Poor Michael’s Bookshop of Onanole, staying true to their roots while diversifying their retail offerings is key. George Strange’s Bookmart has operated in the same location since 1977 and offers up two storeys of countless books in every genre imaginable.

After a stint in Brandon, Poor Michael’s moved to its current location in 1996 as a seasonal shop operating in Onanole.

Since then, the store has evolved many times to keep up with changing consumer needs.

"We used to just be a bookstore, then we switched to books and coffee to go, then we added food and gifts," owner Murray Evans told the Sun. "If you cast the net wide enough, chances are everyone in the car wants a coffee, a book, a scarf or some local pottery."

Evans believes new bookstores will feel the most competition from e-book sales.

"Used books they’re cheaper than new books and people still want to sit at the beach holding a book and not a touch pad — I’m hoping," Evans said. "I would think (sales) would remain strong, it’s the same with used bookstores as antiques. The same as there’s always another generation coming up that’s interested in antiques, books are a form of an antique in a way. People like the look of them and the feel of them. You don’t want to put a row of laptops up in your living room; it just wouldn’t look the same, would it?"

Since Poor Michael’s operates seasonally, Evans says it’s too early to tell if the rise of e-books will affect sales at all this year.

Lighthouse Books tried to diversify, selling small gifts, music and cards, but Loewen says the economics of it just didn’t make sense.

"No one knows how big (e-books are) going to grow, but when Amazon starts selling more e-books than physical books you know it’s pretty serious for all of us."