In the Shadow of the Giants

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In an ongoing struggle, three thousand people in the beach town of Capitola, California, outside Santa Cruz, protested a developer's intention to sign up the Michigan-based Borders chain (with 157 stores in the U.S.) for a creekside shopping mall. They cited environmental and traffic worries. In Davis, California, concerned residents formed Friends of Davis when it became known earlier this year that Borders had signed a 15-year lease for a 22,000-square-foot store in a new development on university-owned land at the entrance to town. The project, they say, jeopardizes traffic flow and, inevitably, the economic stability of the town's 10 established bookstores. According to John Hamilton, who immediately announced his intention to move his 3,000-square foot Next Chapter out of town to another location, 'Superstores look for markets that are already there and then eat them up. Borders opens up in college towns, indoctrinates students as to what a bookstore is so they won't know what an independent can be..'

In Lawrence, Kansas, where an unwanted outpost of the Wild Oats Community Market market was beaten out of town in 1996, residents fought against Borders as well when the chain signed a lease to move to a genteel stretch of the downtown area.The group, Citizens for Our Historic Downtown, has joined forces with the protestors in Davis and the Philadelphia branch of the Industrial Workers of the World, which had its own much-publicized run-in with Borders last year, to form the Borders Patrol. The coalition wants Borders to respect the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively; respect community wishes and standards; and carry more titles from small, independent presses without asking the presses to pay for returns when returns are forthcoming. The third item reflects the group's long-range desire to protect books and writers.

'Certainly we're concerned about community concerns as we're coming in, but, we're concerned about everybody in the community,' says Borders spokesperson Jody Kohn. 'There are lots of people who can't wait for us to get there.'

The real fight for independents--to keep customers once the competition moves in--is much, much tougher than the individual battles to keep the stores out. 'As soon as we come up with a successful innovation, the chains copy it,' says the veteran independent Larry Robin, of Robin's in Philadelphia. A bookshop owner in the same center city location for 36 years (the store has been there for 60), Robin has been forced to add a decaying city core to his business problems. And yet, he says, there's nothing he'd rather be doing than selling books. 'We're dealing with ideas. It's not socks. What we do is important, even if it's not appreciated.' Passions like this go a long way toward explaining why independent booksellers are seen as front-line warriors not only against the superstore barbarians, but also against price-club discounters, home shopping channel purveyers, niche outlets ranging from hardware to cookware to housewares to pets, and now online pie-in-the-skyers who promise any book any time on just about any subject at discounts that have even Barnes & Noble scrambling. Many booksellers simply don't survive. The American Booksellers Association's tally of member stores that folded from mid-1993 through early 1997 stands at close to 200. The names are mostly quaint and dreamy: Book Nook, Books First, Novel Futures, Volume One, Shakespeare & Co., Books & Co., Salt of the Earth, Once Upon a Mind, Really Neat Books.

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