Plight of bookstores feautured on front page of LA Times...Again!
The article a couple of weeks ago featured the one-two punch handed to Doug Dutton with the closing of Dutton's Beverly Hills and the almost simultaneous news that his landlord at the revered store in Brentwood had plans to redevelop the property.
Yesterday's article (Column One) was entitled "Bookshops' latest sad plot twist "and subtitled "San Francisco, a city of readers, thought itself immune to nationwide shifts in buying habits. But once-cherished stores are folding fast." I didn't know whether to get mad or cry when I read the article, and opted for crying. It doesn't take much these days as I face the cold hard facts of declining sales and a bleak bottom line. And hey! Aren't things supposed to get easier, not harder, once you've established a business and branded its name and services in a community? It certainly doesn't seem so as I hustle every angle I can think of, doing numerous in-store and off-site events and launching this website to try and keep it going. But I've been persistently plagued by the feeling that we, as a society, hit the "tipping point" about a year ago and people are now doing most of their shopping on-line.
OK, so thats why we started this website and are improving it daily to make it easy for you to browse our data base and send email requests to order books. I still think that the whole reason a customer would choose to shop at VB is the experience of coming into the store - actually looking at/ touching/ smelling the books and talking with fellow booklovers - but we all have those moments when the convenience of simply clicking a button would get that item off your to-do list.
But it is becoming more clear to me that, as it says in the article, "Ordering from Amazon.com has almost become the generic term for book buying." Perhaps the most relevant paragraph in the article was this... "This is the paradox of modern bookselling. Even in an entertainment-saturated age, people still buy books. But the casual reader has many other places to get bestsellers and topical books, from warehouse stores to the mall. Meanwhile, book nuts - the ones who simply must buy several volumes a week - are lured online. Few businesses can survive that lose customers from both ends of the spectrum."
OUCH!! That hurts!! However, I am a stubborn Irishwoman, and won't give my store up without first giving it my all. I would love to open up a dialogue with you and learn about your bookbuying habits and what would make you choose to shop at Village Books rather than on-line or at the numerous other places (Costco, Ralphs, B&N, Borders, etc.) I don't even mind if you shop at one of our other esteemed independent bookstores. Please email me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . We've almost made it to 10 years, and I'd sure love to keep it going a little longer...