When Connie Brooks and her husband founded Battenkill Books in 2009 in the small village of Cambridge, NY, the determined move was accompanied by a fair amount of trepidation. At the time, the economy was in the midst of a serious recession, the popularity of ebooks was turning conventional bookselling traditions upside down, and failures of brick-and-mortar bookstores seemed to be accelerating as Amazon dominance in the book industry grew.
In defiance of all the ominous portents, over the intervening five years, the bookstore has become a fixture and popular destination in the small community. Located on East Main Street in the village, Battenkill Books supplements sales from local foot traffic and regular customers with online ordering for customers worldwide. They also have an arrangement with Kobo, selling Kobo ereaders for a small percentage of future income as buyers purchase books through Kobo. This doesn’t represent a major revenue stream at the moment, but it’s a hopeful sign that the increasing numbers of ebook sales can be shared more equitably with independent booksellers.
In part one of this two-part interview, originally posted on sister site ePublish Yourself!, Connie talks about the history of Battenkill Books, the strategies that have kept the business growing despite the difficult economic climate, her perspective on ebooks and their impact on publishing and bookstores, and the variety of customer preferences that she encounters on a daily basis.
From this interview and other articles on the subject, it’s increasingly clear that the key to independent bookstore success hinges to a large degree on how well a store integrates into the community, as a social hub, as a portal to local history, as a means to meet authors, as an outlet for small, unique local presses, as a way to focus literacy programs, as a shopping place for gifts. There are many examples around the Web of indies defying the trends in publishing (including indie authors, indie publishers, and indie bookstores). Bright spots are everywhere: Belfast, Brooklyn, East Harlem, Prague, Portland, Boston, Brattleboro, London, Paris, Beijing, and elsewhere.
An article in SALON earlier this year sounded a positive note:
Stop carving that gravestone. Brick-and-mortar bookstores aren’t dead, yet. On the contrary, independently owned bookstores are growing in number. According to the American Booksellers Association, since hitting a nadir in 2009, the number of indie bookstores in the U.S. has grown 19.3 percent, from 1,651 to 1,971. The current total is less than half the 1990s peak of around 4,000. But it still serves as a rebuke to the conventional wisdom that equates Amazon’s relentless rise with the inevitable death of the physical bookstore.
Ebooks offer tremendous advantages to authors and book buyers alike, but the social and community aspects of independent bookstores are important and irreplaceable. With imagination and forethought, epublishing and indie bookstores will not only co-exist, but will find ways to strengthen each other’s offerings.
