Closure of Fifth Avenue Books in Hillcrest part of changing industry

This content has been archived. It may no longer be accurate or relevant.

From The San Diego Union-Tribune:

Not every book has a happy ending. Not every bookstore, either.

That’s been true for a while, and now add to the casualty list Fifth Avenue Books, a Hillcrest mainstay for 30 years, which is closing its doors at the end of February, putting three employees out of work.

Owner Robert Schrader said his used bookstore, known for the size and variety of its inventory (40,000 titles), has been losing money for several years, most recently about $1,000 a week. While he had hoped the drought was temporary, he now sees it as inescapable: “The traditional brick-and-mortar bookstore simply can’t survive in the age of online book selling.”

. . . .

Sales of e-readers have flattened and the number of stores nationwide has risen, at least as measured by membership in the American Booksellers Association. Bookstore sales through the first 11 months of 2016 were up 3.4 percent compared to the same period in 2015, to about $10.5 billion, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Book sellers are carving out specialty niches and emphasizing author events, hand-picked selections for customers, the “shop local” movement, and other features not available with online merchants.

. . . .

So where some see an inevitable march toward bookstore oblivion, others see signs of hope.

Which is why, in the same week Schrader was announcing the closure of Fifth Avenue Books, another used bookstore just a few miles away was marking a different milestone. Verbatim Books was celebrating its first anniversary.

. . . .

Used bookstores are in some ways the unwanted stepchild of the publishing industry. The only one who makes any money when a used book is sold is the seller — not the author, not the publishing house, not the printer.

But the stores consume a significant slice of the book pie. In a September survey by the New York-based Codex Group, about 11 percent of 4,600 people who had purchased books in the previous month bought them used. That compared to 33 percent who bought (or received as gifts) new books, said Peter Hildick-Smith, president of Codex.

“It’s always been a fairly busy little sub-economy,” he said.

And when the digital age disrupted the industry, used bookstores, with their lower prices, were better positioned to survive. That’s one reason San Diego, like many other cities, has more used stores than new ones.

Link to the rest at San Diego Union-Tribune and thanks to Dave for the tip.