Eric:

In Toronto there have been two instances of bookstores saved by the generosity of the communities they served. In both cases economic realities ultimately overtook these efforts. Increasingly, independent urban bookstores are run as hobbies by wealthy retirees, trust-fund kids or financially supported spouses. Low margins and the high overhead in any urban center location make this form of retail a dubious prospect, almost irrespective of sales volume. An urban bookseller must be willing to work for very little with, at best, no return on investment and more likely with mounting losses. Some individuals choose to do so. Once the initial crisis is averted few communities can be motivated to maintain this kind of commitment in the face of a more-or-less permanent need for subsidy. I hope your Kepler’s fares better the examples here.

jhk:

I have for 20 years run a general design, graphic design and advertising industry bookstore in Toronto. My good-natured competition was an industrial design bookstore, in business for 22 years and an architectural bookstore, in business for more than 25 years. Both these shops will have closed by the end of April. Counter-intuitively, specialty bookselling is more vulnerable to competition from large-scale players than is general bookselling. We all assumed that our problem was going to be B & N and the like (or perhaps Walmart). Of course the problem has turned out to be Amazon. Bibliophiles feel the pleasure of browsing offsets the attraction of a 30% discount and imagine that it must be so for the majority of customers. Sometimes it is. Amazon can’t compete with me in the depth my inventory. All those obscure European and Japanese titles that I make no money on are supposed to push the easy stuff out the door. Amazon kills me on the easy stuff. Sometimes I feel like a Sears catalogue showroom – everyone browsing with a notepad!

srd:

Your point about Barnes & Noble is fair enough. They are a bookstore and all bookstores can, potentially, serve this cultural purpose. However Barnes and Noble rarely sets up shop in a marginal area of town. Shopping malls (or their gentrified main street equivalents) have strict rules of participation, spoken and unspoken. Shops like B & N invite certain types of people and exclude others both through the physical properties of the stores and through the selection of material they offer for sale. Which is fair. So do independents. Yet independent bookstores manifest all the idiosyncrasies of the individuals who “curate” them, both in terms of their rules of public conduct and in the ideas being disseminated. We negotiate with the diverse elements in our streetscapes and culturescapes in a way that a corporation cannot, rightly, be expected to do. They have a responsibility to their shareholders. We have a responsibility to a more diverse group of stakeholders.

Quick googling gave this blog-entry explaining some of their history/present use http://www.yoke.or.jp/echo/0511/f.html

the great urban idleness reservation – what a precise observation, grant.

as in general independent bookstores seem to suffer i can see theme focused independent bookstores flourishing. – most notably in the field of art, design and architecture. and they are a true oasis of idleness – much like some fashion boutiques or furniture and design shops that you find in cities like rome, milan, madrid, paris, newyork, london, berlin etc. etc….
these (mostly but not exclusively smallish) shops offer you something that is popularly being summed up under the label of ‘curated consumption’. – you step into this world, have a complimentary coffee or a gin tonic and talk with the owner about the world and the new things that are relevant and up and coming through her/his eye…

here is a new book idea for you grant. – get yourself a good publishing house – one that is really leading in coffee table books – team up with a good photographer (they will provide you with one) – and explore these reserves of urban idleness in essays and interviews.

do it.

Kepler’s bookstore in Menlo Park, CA provides a story of how a community didn’t miss its center until it was gone. Kepler’s went out of business, but there was such an uproar from the community and a rush of donations that it reopened a month later as the community realized that it couldn’t live without its bookstore at the center of town. Kepler’s now offer memberships so that people can recognize the value it brings above and beyond selling books.