As big box stores close, Park Road Books thrives in a rapidly changing industry
Joseph-Beth Booksellers has left town. Borders is liquidating. The number of bookstores in Charlotte continues to shrink.
If you believe conventional wisdom, Park Road Books' demise must be right around the corner. It is, after all, an independent bookstore, a bricks-and-mortar retailer in the age of online booksellers and e-books.
Even the nation's second-largest chain couldn't make it in this fast-changing industry. Last week, Borders Group Inc. announced it would liquidate its 399 bookstores. As a result, Charlotte will lose Borders stores at Northlake Mall and StoneCrest.
Park Road Books can't compete with giant retailers' prices. With about 4,000 square feet, it's less than a fifth the size of the city's largest Barnes & Noble. It doesn't serve coffee.
The store is also up against an online market, led by Amazon and Barnes & Noble, that keeps growing. Last year, for the first time, online spending on books surpassed spending in bookstore chains, according to Bowker, a bibliographic research firm. This year's online spending will likely eclipse spending in all bookstores.
But Park Road Books, it turns out, isn't going anywhere.
With a business plan that includes frequent author readings, a knowledgeable staff and a dog, Yola, who serves as store greeter, owners Sally Brewster and Frazer Dobson are standing strong.
They have weathered the recession. They have outlasted competition from numerous chain stores. They recently signed a five-year lease.
"We're in excellent shape," Brewster said.
Incubator for bestsellers
Independent bookstores accounted for 5 percent of last year's $1.5 billion in U.S. book spending, but they wield an influence larger than their sales numbers.
"Anybody in the publishing industry will say they're the most important market segment in the book industry. They're the incubator for bestsellers," said Craig Popelars, marketing director for Chapel Hill's Algonquin Books. "When we put an author on a 20-city tour, 18 of those stops are going to be at independent booksellers."
Publishers rely on indie booksellers to tell customers about promising new authors. Hand selling, as it's called, can mean the difference between a success and a flop.
It's what propelled Algonquin's "Water for Elephants" to bestseller lists in 2006, Popelars said. Independent bookstores were the first to embrace the novel, by newcomer Sara Gruen. Then national media, chains and Amazon jumped on the bandwagon.
The process is hard to replicate in chain stores, Popelars said, because the book buyer isn't the same person who's doing the selling.
In the tight world of indie bookstores, one bookseller tells another about a great new book. Word spreads. "Sally's reach within the independent bookselling community," he said, "is throughout the country."
'Just for the love of it'
Park Road Books was founded by John Barringer as Little Professor Books. It opened in Park Road Shopping Center in 1977 and became a well-loved fixture in the community.
Then, in the early 1990s, megastores arrived in town.
"The family-owned bookstore isn't going to be there five years from now," the president of Publishers Warehouse, a discount bookseller, predicted in a 1992 Observer story. "I wouldn't want to be a single bookstore owner selling at full price operating in a little strip shopping center somewhere."
Over the next several years, eight independent Charlotte bookstores closed, including three Intimate Bookshops and Brandywine Books on Selwyn Avenue.
The few that survived included Little Professor and The BookMark in Founder's Hall, now Charlotte's only other independent bookstore.
In 1999, Little Professor was still holding its own, but Barringer was ready to retire. He asked Brewster, a former Random House sales representative, if she would consider buying the store.
"I said, 'You'd be crazy to buy a store now,' " Brewster recalled.
She bought it anyway.
"I wasn't expecting to make a lot of money," she said. "It was just for the love of it."
Regular customers
Today, Park Road Books is a family-owned bookstore in a shopping center - the exact kind of store whose extinction was predicted by the Publishers Warehouse president in 1992.
Brewster, 47, has lived in Charlotte most of her life. Her retired dad comes in regularly to deal with incoming inventory. Her mom helps out during the holidays.
Brewster's husband, Frazer Dobson, became co-owner after the couple married in 2003. He's a sales representative for Workman Publishing, and he writes the store's email newsletter.
Park Road does about $1 million in annual sales, making it slightly larger than the average independent bookstore. Its clientele comes from all over town and beyond. A few customers even make a vacation stop each year while driving through Charlotte on Interstate 77.
"We're grateful," Brewster said. "A little bewildered, but grateful."
There are also many regulars, including Sue Richards, who walked into the store one recent morning with a list of books.
Indie booksellers often complain about customers who use their store as Amazon's showroom - browsing, requesting recommendations, then ordering online. Richards does the opposite. She reads about books online, and then buys them at Park Road Books.
Park Road staffers know her taste and her husband's taste. They even recognize her voice on the phone.
"They're my favorite people in the world," Richards said. "I just think independent bookstores are vital to the community."
That day, she purchased a gift card and four books, including "Butterfly's Child," by Raleigh's Angela Davis-Gardner. It's a staff favorite.
Later, Bob Thomason arrived with dog Sadie, a Chihuahua mix. While Thomason bought a Wall Street Journal, Sadie met Brewster behind the counter to collect a treat from the dog biscuit jar.
"She looks forward to coming in every day," Thomason said.
Threat posed by Kindle
In the bookstore business, Brewster has learned, there always seems to be a new threat.
In 2005, Joseph-Beth Booksellers, a small chain based in Lexington, Ky., opened a store in SouthPark Mall, joining a nearby Borders and Barnes & Noble. All three were within 4 miles of her store.
Joseph-Beth was a lovely store with a nice bistro. It competed with Park Road for book signings. And it hurt Park Road's business.
Then, in November 2007, a new threat: Amazon released the Kindle electronic reader and sold out in less than four hours.
Brewster stayed the course, giving free talks about books to any group that would have her, hosting book signings in the store for any author who inquired. Sometimes, signings featured big names - Kathryn Stockett, Chelsea Handler, Pat Conroy. Sometimes, they brought in self-published local authors. Both groups are welcome. The goal is to get customers into the store.
But sales tumbled when the recession hit in 2008 and stayed down in 2009.
"Those were probably the scariest" months, she said. "I stopped looking at previous years' sales. What matters is if you have enough money to pay the bills."
She reduced inventory, cut advertising, scaled back employee hours. She also beefed up the store's popular puzzle section. She ended some months in the red, but refused to lay off any of her 13 employees.
Then last November, the bookstore finally caught a break. Both Joseph-Beth and Borders at Morrocroft Village announced they were shutting down. Since they closed, Brewster said, Park Road Books' sales, though still not back to pre-recession levels, have climbed more than 20 percent.
Supporting local business
In the world of indie bookselling, some people are using the R word: Resurgence.
Membership in the American Booksellers Association, which represents independent stores, was up 7 percent from May 2010 to May 2011 - the first significant jump after years of decline.
Meg Smith, the ABA's marketing officer, believes independent bookstores are benefiting from shoppers' growing desire to support local businesses. A prominent sign in Park Road's window urges customers to "Cultivate Community. Shop Indie." In promotional materials, the store points out that $68 of every $100 spent there stays in the community. At chain stores, $43 stays in the community. And when you order from Amazon, nothing does.
Indie booksellers, including Park Road, have also begun competing against Amazon in the e-book market, selling Google eBooks on their websites.
Still, some store owners worry about the future.
David and Kathy Friese opened The BookMark in Charlotte's Founder's Hall in 1992 to cater to the hundreds of uptown workers, especially Bank of America employees, who pass by each weekday. In recent years, the store has suffered because of layoffs and construction that diverted foot traffic.
"We see ourselves in business in the near future," David Friese said, but he wonders about the viability of the industry five years out.
When Charlotte's two remaining Borders stores close in coming weeks, the county will have nine full-service booksellers. Four are Barnes & Noble stores - Sharon Road, The Arboretum, Carolina Place Mall and Birkdale Village. Two are Books-A-Million, in Cotswold Mall and on Steele Creek Road in southwest Charlotte.
The remaining three are independents - The BookMark and Park Road Books, plus Main Street Books in Davidson.
Attention to customer service
These days, Brewster doesn't fret over competition from Barnes & Noble, the nation's biggest chain. She and many others believe the biggest threat to indies is Amazon, which accounted for 19 percent of all book dollars spent last year.
Amazon undercuts competitors in part by not collecting sales tax.
"They give people unrealistic expectations of price and cost," she said.
Her business plan is to offer what Amazon can't: Smart book recommendations, a chance to meet authors, face-to-face customer service.
"I'm optimistic," Brewster said. "You just have to find reasons to be relevant."
That means hosting store events, like the recent launch of John Hart's thriller, "Iron House." About 75 people attended. Brewster served watermelon and boiled peanuts.
It means gift-wrapping copies of "Blueberries for Sal" and "Arthur's Family Vacation" separately, so a customer's granddaughter will have two presents to open.
It means offering treats to dogs, greeting everyone who walks in, suggesting a novel that will make a customer return and announce: "I loved it."
It means surviving, one book at a time.
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