PW: Bookland of Maine To Close Four Stores

Bookland of Maine is the latest regional chain in New England to fall victim to the triple whammy of Borders, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com. After weeks of rumors, on Thursday, March 9, owner and president David Turitz announced that the company will close four stores. The Lewiston store closed last week, and going-out-of-business sales have begun at the Biddeford, Sanford and South Portland locations.

Turitz told PW that a combination of things led to the closings, including the collapse of a downtown redevelopment project in Portland, which was to have included a large Bookland store. "When all is said and done," he noted, "growth has really stopped. Very few stores are up, and the effect of the number of choices out there has hurt us a lot. Online bookselling is becoming pretty pervasive. It's all about convenience."

After these four closings, Bookland will still have seven stores in Maine, including a newsstand at the Portland International Jetport, and two in New Hampshire, which operate under the Stroudwater Books name. The company opened its first bookstore, in Biddeford, in 1973. It was an offshoot of the Portland News Company, founded in 1926 to distribute books, magazines and newspapers.

According to NEBA executive director Rusty Drugan, "You really can't argue that there's a New England chain left [with multiple stores in more than one state]. What amazes me is how sudden this is. A year ago, Bookland was expanding, and unlike Lauriat's, which had a neighborhood model, Bookland was definitely going into the superstore business. They were doing very well."

In good news, the Lewiston space vacated by Bookland is slated to reopen as a Mr. Paperback by April 1. "As of today there are 13 Mr. Paperback stores. What we are doing is closing one store in Waterville where we have two stores, and we're taking the contents down to Lewiston," explained Mr. Paperback general manager Jim McCree. The Mr. Paperback stores, which started in Bangor in 1963, are known for their hardscrabble appearance, which closely resembles the landscape of northern Maine, rather than the luxurious super store model currently in vogue elsewhere. They carry books, gifts, and greeting cards.