On Course for a Comeback

A look at the changing world of bookstores in the lake area and beyond.

STORY BY CHIP R. BELL

BBrandywine Books was down the street from my home

in Charlotte, NC. They gave terrific, highly personalized customer service. I elected to show my admiration by writing an article about Brandywine for The American Bookseller magazine. The magazine editor was so pleased with my piece, she called the owner of Brandywine to tell her that my article was to be their cover story. But she learned something that came as a shock to me. Brandywine was not able to compete with the giant

Borders bookstore nearby and was declaring bankruptcy. My article was not published. A few years later, Borders Books, along with Bookstop, Crown Books, BooksA-Million, and Waldenbooks, met the same fate when they could not compete with Amazon. The story illustrates the American bookstore’s charming, chaotic, and ever-changing future.

A bookstore is an entity that derives its primary revenue from the sale of books. This excludes the retail section of a museum (like Georgia Writers Museum), a booth in an antique mall (like Greensboro Antique Mall), or a section of a retail store (like WalMart).

FAR LEFT: The Story Shop in downtown Monroe specializes in books for children. LEFT: Avid Bookshop is a communityfocused bookselling business based in Athens.

Bookstores Are Back!

Bookstores are coming back. Amazon has been the big kahuna in bookselling, gaining an even greater share of the market as the COVID pandemic stopped in-store visits and increased online orders. But post-pandemic buying behavior has triggered a bookstore comeback and changed the book revenue trajectory of Amazon.As a result, they announced they are closing all their 68 bookstores as that book business failed to grow beyond 3 percent.

American Booksellers Association’s membership has increased from 1,689 stores represented three years ago to more than 2,500. After the COVID pandemic, book shoppers want to return to an in-person shopping experience and enjoy the extra community feeling that can come out of it.

“People’s mentality these days has shifted in favor of supporting the community bookstores,” says Elizabeth Meyer, former owner of Dog Ear Books in Madison. “We have had a real taste of what it’s like to lose customers because of the dominating presence of big beasts like Amazon.” NY Times reporter Jack Hudson calls them “sterile locales, stripped by algorithm of any real character.”

Making a Bookstore Work

The success stories of a few bookstores in the area provide guidance for features that turn the color of the bottom line from red to black. Here are three role models.

Avid Bookshop is a community-focused bookselling business headquartered in Athens. Avid has been named a top-five finalist in Publishers Weekly’s Bookstore of the Year competition.

“Books change readers’ lives for the better,” says Avid operations director Rachel Watkins. “We are an ethically run business with a strong focus on community engagement. We continually challenge ourselves to find creative ways to make Athens and ourselves better through our #AvidGivesBack and #AvidInSchools initiatives, activism, events, book fairs, author readings, partnerships, book clubs, and more.”

The Story Shop opened in 2016 in downtown Monroe and specializes in books for children. Creative Director Lisa Dibble described their success this way: “We have created a space where stories come to life.

No matter how cheaply certain corporations can sell their books, they will never be able to sell the magic of walking through fur coats into a 19th-century French wardrobe to Narnia, or exploring a furnished Hobbit Hole, or knocking on Sherlock Holmes’ front door. Real storybook magic exists. But it can’t be sold, only experienced at the Story Shop.”

Horton’s Books and Gifts in Carrollton is not Lake Country, but it is a role model worth mimicking. Established in 1891, it is the oldest bookstore in Georgia and features antique shelves, a 1918 cash register, and elegant displays.

“Our success has come from knowing our customers, treating them extremely well, and closely following the trends,” says owner Dorothy Pittman. “We try to think like folks in the fashion industry. Our offerings must change just as fast as our customers do.”

What about the Lake Country?

Morgan County residents remember the days of Dog Ear Books. Owner Elizabeth Meyer said, “We did many things right but were the victim of unfortunate timing. Amazon was coming on the scene, and customers were enamored with the ease of ordering online.” Madison resident Frank Walsh, owner of Yesteryear Books in Atlanta for over 30 years, commented, “The 80s and 90s were great. But part of the movement away from bookstores was linked to buyers’ preference for hand-held devices like Kindle instead of the actual book.”

“Eatonton never had a real bookstore in my lifetime (75+ years),” claims Putnam County historian Jim Marshall. “The drug stores had magazine racks with all the popular magazines, comic books, and ‘girlie’ magazines, usually kept close to the cash register, so you had to ask for them. As a result, we relied mainly on the city library for reading material. Our only bookstore today is Heaven’s Gate, a Christian bookstore that opened about ten years ago.”

Milledgeville-Baldwin Chamber of Commerce director Kara Lassiter states, “Except for a small Barnes and Noble bookstore on the Georgia College campus, the only bookstore in Baldwin County is Walls of Books.” They aim to provide a family-friendly environment for customers to buy and trade used and new books.

According to Greene County Chamber of Commerce director Mika Mills, there are no bookstores in Greene County, but she says one would be a great addition to Greensboro and the lake area. Unfortunately, Hancock County also has no bookstore.

Consider this an all-call to bookstore entrepreneurs. The Lake Country has a ready book buyer’s market, area success stories to emulate, and the big dot com giant is retreating. Need proof? The book sales revenue for Georgia Writers Museum jumped from about $7,000 in 2021 to over $20,000 in 2022. Two hundred people attended a “Meet the Author” talk and book signing in 2021; over 500 attended in 2022.

It is time to turn the page for a new bookstore in the land of fish tales and mulligans. While bookstores have a no-guaranteed future, trends show that a book in the hand is worth a lot to readers.

P.S. The American Bookseller’s Association stopped publishing its monthly The American Bookseller magazine in 1998, saying the industry was changing too rapidly for a monthly magazine to report in a timely fashion.

Chip R. Bell is a best-selling, award-winning author and serves on the board of Georgia Writers Museum.