In the Shadow of the Giants

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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.'

The rare newcomer is greeted by gratitude mixed with incredulity. Kerry Slattery, manager of the fledgling Skylight Books, a 2,000-square-foot literary store in the Los Feliz section of LosAngeles, says customers ask, 'You're just selling books?' The store is owned by a group of 10, including some actors and an acting teacher who owns the building. 'We don't want to be all things to all people,' Slattery says. 'We want to make our departments deeper and smarter.'

How to translate that commitment into retail terms is the task that the independents face every day of their work lives. Dan Cullen, editor of the trade magazine American Bookseller, recently advised indies to consider themselves personal information managers rather than tradespeople. In his view, the true role for the bookstore of the future, and the key to its survival, is as a source of continuous, in-depth, one-on-one dialogue with its customers. In this vision of bookseller as social director, stores must reach out via e-mail, the Web, customer databases, and whatever other resources they can cultivate to discover what valued customers want to read and whether they'd like to meet other people interested in the same subjects. With 50,000 titles published annually in the United States, we need help moving through the thicket from a partner who cares enough to keep our intellectual and other needs in mind, someone whose job is to serve us. We have money managers for our money--why not information managers for our minds? Stranger things have been dreamed of.

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