In the Shadow of the Giants

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

To survive in this climate takes nerve and skill, and those who do it--Powell's in Portland; Tattered Cover in Denver; Book Passages in Corte Madera, California; Elliot Bay Books in Seattle; Just Books in Greenwich,Connecticut; The Hungry Mind in St. Paul, Minnesota--do it with a vengeance, giving their customers what bookseller William Kramer of the Washington, D.C., independent Kramer Books & Afterwords terms life experiences, not just consumer experiences.

Hungry Mind owner David Unowsky, who says he built his business in preparation for this sort of competition, includes among his offensive tactics more service, more author events, more bargains. 'We do specialized market niches, community outreach, out-of-store events, author series, discounts,' Unowsky says. 'When a Barnes &Noble moved in two blocks away, we picked 25 books each month, called them The Hungry Mind 25, discounted them at 25 percent. Trying to be like the chains, we'll lose, because they can out-discount and out-advertise us. The chains are better at celebrity events. We do literary authors. No one has a poetry section like ours. We specialize in books for the helping professions, selling at conferences on death and dying, social work. This is a very important part of our business. We do two conferences a week, send someone with books. It results in solid sales plus publicity that money can't buy. We cement ties with the community that chains can't do.'

Elsewhere, storeowners cite newsletters, signings, performances, children's events, reading groups, community centers, greater depth of inventory, a focus on regional authors, smarter staff, anything that will make them indispensable without distorting their first mission--getting books into people's hands.

Many of the forward-thinking independents are giving the online world a shot. (See sidebar.) At this point, many view online selling as a way to expand service to existing customers rather than as a way to attract new ones. Here too passion may be a survival tool. The San Francisco based Booksmith, a 4,000-square-foot store insulated from the brunt of superstore competition by its location in the strongly individualistic Haight-Ashbury district, admits to deriving good value from its cyberstore. Web manager Thomas Gladysz spends full time on the site, posting information about the business and devising interest-group clusters that catch his fancy. Of the hundred or so pages he has devised, one is devoted to Polish fiction, another to signed books, and another to 'flapper fiction.' Gladysz cultivates alliances with other Web sites as well, providing book resources for elder care and child care groups and for writer Kathy Acker, who lives in the neighborhood. 'People come to the store and say, 'I saw it on your Web site.' That means they're using the Web to preshop. I wouldn't have expected that,' he says. 'You don't make a ton of money, but it helps with sales, publicity, and marketing.'

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print