How Bookstores Tell A Story About America

 

 

I recently read The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore, by Evan Friss. It’s an engaging perspective on the American bookstore and a self-professed “love letter to bookstores” for “those who cherish sanctuaries of literature.”  

It delivers just that. It shows us why bookstores are delightful literary playgrounds.  

Bookstores make a difference in helping us find books to read. Of course, you can shop on Amazon for the book you know that you want, but the discovery in a bookstore is unrivaled. Luckily. people still buy books at bookstores, but the number of bookstores has declined significantly from 30 years ago.  

In 1993, the U.S Census Bureau, according to this book, counted 13,499 bookstores. These stories served 19,253 citizens per store. In 2021, just 5,591 bookstores existed, with each one serving triple the population of 59,283. So, our nation grew in size, but bookstores shrank. Of course, there’s one giant retailer that doesn’t have a brick-and-mortar storefront, and that’s Amazon.  

But the book industry is healthy. Bookstores are fine. Publishers are okay. And plenty of people want to be authors.  

Friss notes: “Nineteenth-century booksellers worried that public libraries would destroy them. In the twentieth century, the bogeyman was the radio, then the movies, then T.V, then mass market paperbacks, and then the superstores. In the twenty-first century, e-books and Amazon have been the existential threats. The fear that the book business is imperiled near death, has always been an industry staple.”  

Just two centuries ago in 1828, Friss notes that the book industry was still small. He wrote: “At that point, the national book market was still comparatively meager. Few people read for leisure. Few books found a place in colonial homes. Few bookstores lined the streets. Most of the country’s readers, books, and bookstores were still concentrated in the Northeast, particularly in the larger cities, like not-yet-terribly-large Boston. Clusters of printers, publishers, and sellers were also emerging in New York and Philadelphia.   

A generation later, in 1860, New York City the largest American city then - and - now had 2.6% of the nation’s population but nearly 11% of its booksellers. New York has been a literary jewel for most of America’s history.  

Interestingly, the book points out how a large percentage of books have always been purchased outside of traditional bookstores. A century ago, for instance, saw readers patronize drugstores, newsstands, gift shops, department stores, and even cigar shops. Now it’s Costco, Target Walmart, & Amazon.  

By 1930, New York was home to 31% of all national book sales. Think about that. Nearly a third of all books purchased in the U.S came in New York.  

Nearly a century ago was the famous Book-of-the-Month Club., a way to introduce good books at a discount to people who sometimes lived in book deserts. It sold millions of books and spawned copycats.  

The more recent history of books has been all over the place.  

It was only by 1981 that one company had a store in every state, with Walden Books’ 735 outlets servicing all 50. At the time, nearly a quarter of all book sales came from Walden Books or B. Dalton. 

In the 1970s, Len Riggio began turning Barnes & Noble into a powerhouse that would eventually disrupt things by expanding wildly, building super-sized stores with cafes, discounting best-sellers by 40%, and claiming a bigger share of the market. In 1997, then with 538 superstores, they were opening more than one new store a week. At that time Boarders and B&N accounted for 43.3% of all bookstore sales. 

“Never had just two companies so dominated the market,” writes Friss. 

Between 1995 and 2000, a staggering 43% of independent bookstores went out of business, unable to compete with the chains and Amazon, undercut by price and outdone by a superior amount of book selection offerings.  

B&N peaked with 726 stores in 2009. The Great Recession began in late 2008 and came with Amazon’s soaring rise and the establishment of the e-book.   

In the 1950s, America bought 72% of their trade books from indie stores. In 1980, it was only 40%. By the early 2000s, just 13%. The number of indie bookstore members dropped from 5,550 in 1995 to 1,512 in 2011, but since then, the number of stores has risen by more than 50%. 

Perhaps the real threat to bookstores is not Amazon or even competing content providers, some of which are free. No, it is that America is no longer a book-reading nation. In 2020, a report found that 44.5% of adults did not read a single book outside a school or work assignment. The percentage of adults who could be considered readers dropped from 56.9% in 1982 to 46.7% in 2002.  

But the bookstore is a place of beauty, pleasure, and significance. 

Friss poetically says: “The bookstore was intended to be a space where words mattered, where people would gather, where writers could meet readers…The bookstore had helped forge a community, a community now more visible and with more supportive institutions… Once upon a time, it was a bookstore that served as a meeting space for organizing protests, an intellectual space for thinking and learning about sexuality, a safe space for people to ask questions and talk openly-maybe even for the first time - about who they really were - It was a space that people visited from around the world and a place where people longed to work.” 

Bookstores may be a business but they serve a societal good that few commercial enterprises can adequately claim. Today’s bookstore is still a special place where people can freely explore the world. As Friss concludes: “Bookstores, even the little ones, can shape the world around them.”

 

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About Brian Feinblum

Brian Feinblum should be followed on www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2024. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog. His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully).  This award-winning blog has generated over 3.9 million pageviews. With 5,000+ posts over the past dozen years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs by BookBaby  http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” For the past three decades, including 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and director of publicity positions at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler. He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, Morgan James Publishing, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.