The floor-to-ceiling windows at RiverRun Bookstore splashed sunlight across a long display table laden with new books, the covers of which created a tapestry of colors and fonts in the Congress Street store in Portsmouth. Owner Tom Holbrook was at the head of the table, standing beneath a large, blue and yellow “Buy Local” sign that hangs on the wall. This week marks the one-year anniversary of RiverRun’s move to Congress Street. Relocating from Commercial Alley has made a big difference, according to Holbrook.

“It has moved us so far along on my image of what the bookstore was going to be, and my image of what the bookstore was going to be was not only a great place to come and talk about books and buy great books, but it was going to be the cultural center of the town,” Holbrook said. “Not that we’re that now, but, within a year, we’ve done more impressive events and done more cooperation with things than we did in the four years before,” he said.

Despite the proliferation of online shopping, Internet chat rooms and the Myspace empire, location still matters. That’s especially true for independent bookstores, whose biggest appeal is often their physical presence in a community. Water Street Bookstore in Exeter is another landmark independent shop. Water Street is ideally located in Exeter’s thriving downtown, which is still small enough to dissuade big box stores from moving in, according to owner Dan Chartrand. “One of the great things about being located in Exeter is that we’re not considered a primary market. We’re a secondary or even a tertiary market,” Chartrand said, “but this is an amazing town that has so much literary tradition and so much tradition in terms of education. It’s a real gem.”  

Both RiverRun and Water Street demonstrate how independent bookstores can contribute to a community’s vitality.

the independent advantage

According to Chartrand, locally owned stores can capitalize on a number of things. “Independent bookstores have opportunity from here on out, for the next five to 10 years. We’re smaller, more nimble and not a central operation. We can respond to the market demands in our communities in a way that national chains cannot,” he said.

“You can never beat the chains or the Web on price,” Holbrook said. “You just can’t. And if you’re never ever going to win on price, you need to beat them on everything else. So that’s our goal, to beat them on everything else. We try to be more knowledgeable. We try to have better equipment and information. We try to have better customer service and we try to do things that make us integral to the community in a way that they can’t or won’t or don’t,” he said.

Specialization is another way that independent stores can trump the chains. Gulliver’s Travel Books, Maps & Accessories, in downtown Portsmouth, has been offering all things travel for the last 10 years. By not carrying a variety of genres, owner Alison Tucker can focus on travel, which allows her to better serve customers. “People get overwhelmed by choices, and I try to match the right book with the right person,” she said. “Depending on the customer and how busy the store is, I can spend an hour with a customer.” In addition to travel books, Tucker also sells accessories and maps. She estimates that sales from those items make up about half of the store’s gross.   

Tucker also uses her own travel experience to inform customers. In the back of Gulliver’s, she has stacks of folders with information and photographs collected from her trips all over the world. If someone has a question that can’t be answered in a guidebook, Tucker pulls out a folder. Her customers’ satisfaction is evident in the postcards that decorate her walls, all sent by travelers who benefited from Tucker’s tips.

Independent bookstores rely on the competence of their employees to bring quality services to customers. Holbrook offers a higher wage to make sure he gets mature, responsible employees, starting new staff at $10 an hour. Chartrand also tries to hire qualified booksellers. His employees know books, but they also understand the role that independent bookstores play in their community. “We hire people that have a natural grasp of that concept and we train booksellers to understand that that is their role,” he said.

the corporate advantage

Chartrand believes that corporate chains like Barnes & Noble—not small independent stores—are the dinosaurs facing extinction. “They fixed their costs with huge retail space. They’re too large for the market conditions that exist, and now they’re trying all kinds of business models to justify what they did in the ’90s. They’re trying to figure out how to make money,” he said.

Barnes & Noble opened 32 new stores in 2006. They closed 18, bringing the total number of stores to 792, according to Lenore Feder, of Barnes & Noble, Inc. The Manhattan-based company has taken several innovative steps to bump up revenue. Instead of only selling books, they offer chocolate bars, calendars, bookmarks, cappuccinos, reading lamps and other accessories. In RiverRun, you’ll only find books. There are no coffee mugs or chocolate bars. Instead, the store sells “good books and just books,” Holbrook said.

In the early 1980s, Barnes & Noble began publishing books to supplement its revenue. In 2001, the company acquired SparkNotes, a popular educational Web site and publishing company. In 2002, it acquired Sterling Publishing, which publishes how-to books. When Stephen Riggio took over as CEO of Barnes & Noble in 2002, he vowed that 10 percent of the company’s sales would come from books published in-house.

The Newington Barnes & Noble, located approximately two miles from the heart of downtown Portsmouth, has now been open for eight years. Most Barnes & Noble stores average 25,000 square feet and carry up to 200,000 titles, according to the company’s Web site. By contrast, RiverRun has 1,500 square feet and can carry up to 10,000 titles. 

“Each Barnes & Noble bookstore is a community center in the area that it serves,” Feder said. Our booksellers are very involved with the schools, libraries and other literacy organizations in their neighborhoods and city. Book selection, store events and promotions are tailored to the needs of the communities they serve.”

Sally Stoklosa, community relations manager at the Newington store, organizes all the book signings, author readings and other community events that take place there. Stoklosa believes independent stores and chain stores can coexist. “The more bookstores a community has, the better,” she said. “Literacy is one of the most important things, so we’ll go out of the way to help people access whatever they want. If we have a customer that is looking for something that we don’t have, then we’ll call all the local stores.” Both Holbrook and Tucker confirmed that they have received such calls from Barnes & Noble in the past.
Although some people make a point of seeking out independent bookstores, Barnes & Noble has no shortage of loyal customers. “For a lot of people, it’s diversity,” Stoklosa said. “We have a lot of back stock, especially in the genres. Science fiction and romance are very popular. Then, for some people, they can come in, read the newspaper and have a nice cup of coffee. We also have a great children’s section with a knowledgeable staff. We try to cater to everybody.”

According to Holbrook, the Newington store “is not a bad place, it just has nothing to do with what I’m trying to do. It’s such a different experience. Barnes & Noble is two miles away, but it’s like another planet.”

For Holbrook, supporting the community and underwriting cultural events has almost become a second business.

the role of a community bookstore

“Over the years that we’ve been open, I’ve started to see a downtown independent business as being far more like a local nonprofit than like a giant bookstore,” Holbrook said. “I pick a reasonable salary that I pay myself and the rest of it is used to attract people to the store. And you can buy ads, but my strategy has been to plow my money into community things that people will go to and be excited by. The only advertising I do that’s not somehow underwriting some interesting event or charity is in The Wire and The Gazette, and I do that because I want to support those papers, because I like them, which is another way of being involved in the community.”  

A number of charities and organizations solicit RiverRun for help with various causes. Holbrook is often asked to sell books at a nonprofit event where an author might be speaking. The profit the bookstore makes is shared with the sponsoring charity, “and everyone is happy,” Holbrook said.

The bookstore also has a program for regular customers, wherein the store donates a certain percentage of the customer’s purchase to a local charity. Through that program, RiverRun has given money to the Crossroads House, Families First and New Heights. Holbrook underwrites community events and supports local charities, which contributes to the cultural vibrancy and health of Portsmouth, and gets the bookstore’s name into the community.

“I don’t want to discount the importance of books, because it’s what I love. It’s what I’m good at and it’s what this town loves,” Holbrook said. “But, in a lot of ways, the success of the bookstore has been leveraged to do the kinds of things in town that I wish other people were doing.”

He pointed to programs like “Writers on a New England Stage,” which RiverRun co-sponsors in collaboration with The Music Hall and New Hampshire Public Radio. The series has brought a number of notable authors to speak in Portsmouth, including Dan Brown, John Updike and Doris Kearns Goodwin. According to Holbrook, six out of the last seven speakers have sold out The Music Hall. Ken Burns and Richard Russo are scheduled to appear this fall.   

Water Street also considers itself more than a bookstore. “Our role is of a third place. We’re not home, we’re not work, we’re a public place, and people crave those third places,” Chartrand said. “We’re providing a gathering point and have an important role in weaving the community together.”

“I think we’ve gone through the whole thing where people want to be at home and watch their TV,” Holbrook added, “and I think people want to connect again. But you have to cultivate the town all the time for it to be the place that you want it to be.”

Chartrand and Holbrook are not the only ones who see independent bookstores as the thread keeping communities intact. “It is part of the cultural and economic fabric of your community, and you have to support the businesses that you love in your communities,” said Steve Fischer, executive director of the New England Independent Booksellers Association. “Every community that has a really good bookstore knows they have one. A lot of people that know they have a great town will talk about their bookstore.”

regional cooperation

NEIBA strives to further the success of professional independent booksellers throughout New England and parts of New York. In its 35-year existence, NEIBA has seen a number of upheavals in the bookselling industry, but its membership remains steady. “In the past few years, we’ve lost some small stores, but we haven’t shown a significant decrease. There are also a few that have opened,” Fischer said. “Booksellers are facing the reality of people buying fewer books and a world where more people shop online.”

But, Fischer added, independent stores can still take advantage of things that Web sites and chain stores cannot. “Again, I think it is service and expertise,” he said. “I think that, traditionally, the independent bookstores have always been good with community outreach. National chains have a harder time doing that.”

It wasn’t until last year that NEIBA added the word “independent” to its name. The change symbolized a realization that the organization should focus on independent bookstores. Members also realized that building community would be the key to success for many of those stores. By dipping into its generous endowment, NEIBA was able to start offering grants to bookstores interested in setting up local business alliances. RiverRun received one of the grants, which Holbrook used to develop a Web site for the Buy Local Seacoast campaign.

Several communities throughout the country have established buy local campaigns in an effort to steer consumer spending away from national chains and toward local proprietors. “They almost all have a bookstore somewhere at the heart of them,” Holbrook said. He cited studies that show how independent businesses give more of their gross income to nonprofits and spend more money at other local businesses. “The whole point of the Buy Local program is to say, ‘Look, when you spend your money with independently owned businesses, it’s better for you.’ If you could get every person in the town of Portsmouth to shift five percent of their income that they spend other places to downtown, it’s a huge amount of money,” Holbrook said.

the future of bookselling

When it comes to books, there is no denying that the times are changing. The Internet is a tool that many independent stores have embraced as a way to compete. Water Street uses a program called BookSense to sell products over the Web. BookSense was created and is maintained by the American Booksellers Association, a national trade group much like NEIBA. But online bookselling isn’t for everyone. “It takes time to grow and requires a lot of attention. Some have chosen to make that commitment and some have not,” Chartrand said.

Fischer agreed. “In a world where booksellers are getting the squeeze from real estate and flat sales, to get the money to develop a Web site and manage it is a lot of work. And it’s a lot of expertise for people who didn’t get into the business to start a Web site. They got into the business to sell books,” he said.

Holbrook has opted not to sell books online, but he can still get 80 percent of books on the market and have them in the store within two days. “That’s better than the chains can do, because they have to go through a central warehouse,” Holbrook said. In coming years, he expects bookstores to carry new display books and have electronic backlists for items not in the store.

Holbrook also predicts that more stores will begin to invest in machines that publish books on demand. Some bookstores are already starting to experiment with such machines, which look like something you’d see in Kinko’s. Customers ask for books, maybe on acid free paper, and maybe with a specific font. They pay a license fee, the cost of printing and a small fee to the bookstore, and 10 minutes later they have their self-tailored book.

“That’s, when you think about it, really democratizing against the chains, because the whole point of the chain is, ‘Hey, I’ve got 30,000 square feet and you don’t.’ And it galls me that there are books that I would like to have in the store that I just don’t have the room for,” Holbrook said. “On the other hand, if it becomes all electronic, then I don’t get to stand around playing with books all day, which is why I like it. But I think it will be gradual. For a lot of years, you’ll still have the art books and the new novels well produced so you can browse them.”

the challenge

Running an independent bookstore will always be a challenge. In addition to competing with Amazon.com and major chains, other challenges have started to spring up. “Statistics suggest that, in the last 10 years, people are reading fewer books. Reading seems to be in competition with the things that didn’t exist 10 years ago—namely, the Internet,” Fischer said.   

Holbrook agrees that fewer people are reading. “My concern is that the younger people aren’t buying books. Within a community like this, my crowd is not very young. Now, how worried am I about that? Well, it may be that nobody buys books in 20 years. It may be that it’s all computerized and you just pay for a download or whatever. Fine, I’ll do something else. But, right now, and for at least the next five years, there are plenty of people in Portsmouth that are readers,” he said.

Another challenge for independent bookstores is the high cost of rent. “High real estate and high rents have really contributed to a tough environment for small independent retailers,” Fischer said.

While bookstore owners are responsible for paying their rent, communities have the responsibility of supporting the stores. “It’s really about people saying, ‘Yes, I’ll pay a couple of dollars more to be able to walk downtown and buy my book from somebody I know.’ They have to say, ‘This is part of what I value about Portsmouth and I’ll pay for it,” Holbrook said.