Last Of The Independents
Bound To Be Read Books is toast:
Bound to be Read, which advertises as "the Twin Cities' largest independent bookstore," will close its two locations in St. Paul and Albuquerque, N.M., President Julia Coyte said Wednesday.
"It's a beautiful store, and nobody's sorrier than I am," she said.
With its diversified goods, she said, "We tried a new concept in book-selling, and it just didn't work very well." Coyte opened the store on St. Paul's Grand Avenue in 2001 and the Albuquerque store in 1991; a third Bound to be Read had about a three-year run in Key Largo, Fla. "We just weren't able to change the book-buying habits of the public. It's a tough world out there."
"You can buy books everywhere -- the grocery store, Target, Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, online."
I love indy bookstores. Saint Paul and the Twin Cities used to be clogged with great independent bookstores; Odegaards was the best bookstore ever. Up to and including the
Ruminator, they also seemed to be run universally by people with no business sense; Odegaard was a notoriously inept businessman, and Ruminator's travails (and attempts to rectify them via his political connections) were .
However, in re: Bound To Be Read:
Coyte, of Albuquerque, is the daughter of Stanley S. Hubbard, president of Hubbard Broadcasting in St. Paul, which owns the bookstores. Her brother, Stanley E. Hubbard, broke the news to about 40 employees Wednesday in St. Paul, while Coyte told the staff of 28 in Albuquerque. The stores will close on or before July 27.
Now the Hubbards have had their ups and downs over the years (mostly ups). But when even the Hubbards financial and marketing mojo can't make a bookstore work, you know you're talking major market change.
Bummer.
Posted by Mitch at
April 28, 2005 05:50 AM
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Even without incompetent management, trying to go head-to-head with the likes of Borders and B&N is suicide for a bookseller these days. The only successful independents I can think of are those like Uncle Hugo's, Dreamhaven and Once Upon A Crime, who are catering to niche markets and have staff that build relationships with the customers.
Posted by: Kevin at April 28, 2005 11:14 AMEven without incompetent management, trying to go head-to-head with the likes of Borders and B&N is suicide for a bookseller these days. The only successful independents I can think of are those like Uncle Hugo's, Dreamhaven and Once Upon A Crime, who are catering to niche markets and have staff that build relationships with the customers.
Posted by: Kevin at April 28, 2005 11:14 AMActually, you can survive as an Indy bookstore if you a)cater to a niche market, as Kevin said, b)carry a book inventory that are used, old, or out-of print (or all three) and c)list that inventory on the American Book Exchange (www.abebooks.com). About two-thirds of the books I own are out of print, and indy bookstores is how I found them.
Posted by: Paul at April 28, 2005 04:43 PMHonestly, Amazon has an infinitely better selection of books. Amazon is also cheaper. I'd go to indies if they actually had something Amazon doesn't, but they don't.
The only thing wrong with Amazon is that you can't shelfbrowse for books of similar topics. But at Bound to be Read, they had such random hit-n-miss shelving/categories that you couldn't find things there either, and they didn't have sales staff that really *knew* the categories of books, so they couldn't recommend you other authors, or help you remember the name of a book you were looking for.
Nah, indies deserve to die out. There's no value added any longer. Only if they sold used books, rare books or had crazy-knowledgeable staff would they have more value than Amazon.
Posted by: Alice at April 28, 2005 09:35 PMThe only thing wrong with Amazon is that you can't shelf-browse?!?!?!
Posted by: Karen at May 6, 2005 08:01 PMHow about that Amazon is a gargantuan corporation that's putting all the small, local retailers out of business?! Bound To Be Read, Albuquerque will be sorely missed. In the 12 years that Albuquerque has lost all of these independent booksellers: Salt of the Earth Books, Full Circle Books, Sisters and Brothers, Living Batch Books and now BTBR too.
Lots of great folks owned and were employed by these stores and each nurtured and maintained its own distinctive community in addition to being the place that many of us purchased our reading material. The only "community" that Amazon maintains is its giant marketing database.
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