Year End Brings Indie Closings

-- Publishers Weekly, 12/20/2006

Nearing the end of 2006, a number of independent booksellers in various parts of the country have announced that this will be their last year in business.

In New York City, after 34 years serving Manhattan's Upper West Side, the independent mystery bookstore Murder Ink will close on December 31. Owner Jay Pearsall also announced that the attached bookstore, Ivy's Books and Curiosities, will also close.

''We've been able to weather many storms, like having a Barnes & Noble 10 blocks away, but I'd have to say our rent is the number one cause for us going out of business,'' Pearsall told PW Daily. The current rent had been increasing by 5% each year, and has risen to $18,000/month. "At $18,000, there's nothing left," Pearsall explained.

Over the years, Murder Ink had changed with the times. "The Internet drove us out of the used and rare market about seven years ago," said Pearsall, who bought the store in 1989. "In many ways there's no such thing as a rare book anymore." There are no plans to keep the bookstore going as an online entity. "We used to do a big catalogue and online business, but we don't do much business that way anymore," said Pearsall. "It was pretty soulless sitting in front of a computer and running to the post office. I like to talk to people about books."

Trying to find another location for the store is not an option. "Now is not the time to open a new bookstore," Pearsall said. "I'm just going to take a little time off and try to write a book about things that happened here at the store and about how things have changed in the book and publishing world over the last 20 years."

Dallas, Texas's oldest African-American Bookstore, Black Images Book Bazaar will close its physical store at the end of the month and convert to an online-only operation. The store was started as a mail-order business in 1977 and has been at its location in the Wynnewood Village mall since 1986. Owners Emma Rogers and Ashira Tosihwe are well known in Dallas for having brought numerous notable African-American writers for appearances in Dallas, including Edward P. Jones, and the pair say they will continue to organize author events and readings.

In Pella, Iowa, Main Street Books, a 12-year-old full-service general bookstore, will be closing its doors on December 28. The owner, Kate Bearce, bought the store in 2004, but said sales were down "significantly" this past year. She said she had not been able to pay off store debt since buying the store two years ago. "If [it] had had a few good years, we would have been able to make it through this year," she said. The store was Bearce's sole source of income, and sales were never high enough to support her. With Main Street Books closing, a local retailer of chocolate and wine plans on adding books to its inventory.

Aliens & Alibis Books in Columbia, S.C., is closing its doors after less than two years in business. In June, the specialty mystery, fantasy and science fiction store owned by Deb Andolino and her son, Gary McCammon, moved from its original home in a mall into a free-standing building. Despite an uptick in business at the new location, Andolino and McCammon were not able to cover expenses.

In an e-mail that went out this week, Andolino wrote, "I had been obsessing over the cause of the lack of business; however, my New Year's resolution is to go on from January 1, 2007, and not look back." Although the physical store is closing and McCammon has taken a job as a pharmacy technician, Andolino intends to continue bookselling through their Web site. She will send out e-mail notices about new books in the store's niche areas, and customers will be able to order through the Web site or by e-mail.

Aliens & Alibis has begun a going-out-of-business sale. All new books are 20% off; a selection of nonreturnable titles will be marked down to 40% off the week after Christmas.