It's a Jungle Out There

Will your favorite indie book store survive or be swallowed whole?

by Jakob Dorof

	print	email	reply

Published: Mar 18, 2009

Kirsten Harper

B

eing an independent bookseller in Philadelphia might not be so bad — if you're one of the precious few still around. When Philly fixture Robin's Book Store announced it was ending its 73-year run last November, it was only another sign of the times: More than a decade deep into Amazon, Borders and Barnes & Noble's ravenous gangbang of all things mom-and-pop, local bookstores are now staring down the barrel of Depression 2.0. We talked to some of the remaining shops — an eclectic group representing local bookstores of all shapes and sizes, from new books to niche markets, from old veterans to spring chickens — and checked into how they're getting through these hard times. Many are changing their business model, hosting unorthodox events to draw new crowds; for others, like House of Our Own co-owner Deborah Sanford, it's business as usual. "Maybe the recession will have an effect on the chains and the Internet," says Sanford, whose University City shop is flanked by frat houses yet retains a diverse, loyal following. "Maybe the day of the small bookstore is about to return." Here's hoping. But with big-box competition and economic turndown breathing down their necks, creativity will be rewarded. So goes the credo of Fishtown lit peddler GERM: "Mutate or die."

In the post-Robin's world, Joseph Fox stands as the oldest bookstore in Philadelphia. Fox and his wife, Madeline, founded the shop in 1951, in a basement down the block from its longstanding current location at 17th and Sansom.

"In the beginning my dad specialized in architecture books," recalls second-generation owner Michael Fox, who's expanded the store's repertoire to include the classic literature, children's titles, classical music tomes and historical accounts that line the racks today.

Fox is proud to point out that his is the only new-books independent bookstore in the heart of Center City, in addition to now being the oldest literature outlet in the city by a significant margin — a pedigree that suggests some uniquely effective business tactics.

"We're at the center of 90 percent of all good book events in Philadelphia," Fox explains, which he achieves via partnerships with the likes of the Free Library and the National Constitution Center. Working as the official bookseller for these organizations, he also gets involved with a number of local events, including the recent Philadelphia Flower Show and next month's third annual Philadelphia Book Festival.

Hence, Fox has developed a good way to insulate the store from the recession. Bookselling at events that host everyone from David Byrne to Barack Obama also supplies Fox with a number of signed first editions from some pretty big names — he recalls a Jerry Lewis event that had him fielding online inquiries from across the globe. "I haven't noticed any significant changes due to the economy except that things are a bit slower at the store, which is to be expected," Fox says. "But it's been far from disastrous. If I were younger, I'd say we'd be here another 50 years."

1724 Sansom St., 215-563-4184, foxbookshop.com.

It wasn't current owner David E. Williams' idea to start a bookstore specializing in conspiracy theories, UFOs and the occult. He was helping his longtime girlfriend, Jennifer Bates, realize her own dream — to sell the kind of books she liked to read — when she opened the store in the fall of 2004.

Things took a turn for the tragic when Bates passed away in May 2007, due to complications from leukemia.

"Beforehand I was just the silent, boring partner," Williams says with a sad but resolute grin. "And in classic sitcom fashion, I was thrust to the forefront with her passing."

GERM's 2008 holiday sales figures were up dramatically over the previous year's — "which is obviously not the same in retail, at least among publicly traded companies," he notes. Williams credits the store's survival to the cheapness of used books — 70 percent of his stock — and his foray into more general genres like art and literature, while retaining GERM's niche focus.

"Oddly enough, some of the apocalypse culture market has expanded with the collapse of the economy and society in general," he says. On top of that, GERM has a voracious appetite for visiting speakers, art gallery exhibitions and local craft and poetry groups — which all make for strong ties with the community. "We just had a group show put on by the Church of Satan, actually," he says. "They had pretty good PowerPoints."

2005 Frankford Ave., 215-423-5002, germbooks.com.

As last month marks the close of New York's Oscar Wilde Bookshop, Giovanni's Room now stands as the world's oldest gay-and-lesbian bookstore. Founded in 1973, the store had two other locations and sets of owners before falling into the hands of current head Ed Hermance. After being turned down by a number of real estate rental agents who wanted nothing to do with a gay bookstore, Hermance spent many frantic months before getting a loan of $12,000 from loyal customers to pay the down payment for the Pine Street building that has housed Giovanni's Room since 1979.

Today, the bookstore faces new challenges. While winter-season sales managed to best Hermance's grim expectations, he admits they're feeling the strains of the recession and changes in the industry as much as anyone else. There's also the matter of the Philadelphia Water Department's proposal to tear up the streets and sidewalks of Antique Row, one that would put holes 16 feet deep in Pine from Broad to Seventh Street for the next two to three years, in an optimistic estimate. While the $15 million plan is said to improve local flood defenses, it could spell doom for small businesses like Giovanni's Room.

Hermance remains hopeful that he and his staff's expertise will keep them afloat. He recalls when Amazon attempted to open an online gay bookstore a few years ago, and was appalled by the inclusion of a book by Gay Talese on their list of recommendations — an author who is gay only in name. Other missteps, like recommending books that were actually homophobic in content, offended the gay community so much that Amazon's LBGTQ division was closed with great haste.

"With a staff that includes a few veterans from Giovanni's early days, we have an enormous experience in the field which you can't get at a major chain or Amazon," Hermance says. "Whether or not that's useful enough to matter to people — that's what we're finding out."

345 S. 12th St., 215-923-2960, giovannisroom.com.

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

The worn-in wooden interior and warm lighting of Brickbat lends an inviting charm that befits the elegant rare, used and small-press new books found within. The price tags run the full gamut, from $4 Hardy Boys hardcovers to a bank-breaking $450 edition of Fox's Book of Martyrs, a massive account of 16th-century persecutions published in 1782.

"In spite of maybe selling a rare book or two every week, there aren't huge sums of money involved," says owner Patrick Richardson Graham. "It's always a struggle."

Graham (pictured) opened Brickbat on Fourth and Bainbridge in January of 2008. His first bookstore, Big Jar on Second Street, closed a few months later.

"I felt we needed to make a change because the idea of having such a large used bookstore didn't make much sense anymore," he says. Although Brickbat is quite spacious, Graham says Big Jar was twice as big.

Brickbat also hosts a regular stream of resident and visiting fringe musicians, including local lo-fi heiress U.S. Girls and a rare international appearance by Japan's haunting and hypnotic Ai Aso.

"We're giving people another reason to come to our store," Graham says. "We try to offer them an experience they can't get sitting at home."

709 S. Fourth St., 215-592-1207, brickbatbooks.blogspot.com.

"We have a lot more people walking through the door than we've ever had," says Art Bourgeau, who with partner Henry Reifsnyder, has owned Whodunit? on 19th and Chestnut ever since its 1977 founding. "Business is very good."

While most remaining Philly bookstores are struggling not to expire, Bourgeau's calm enthusiasm is refreshing.

"The fates have a funny way of coming back to make a fool of you as soon as you start making pronouncements," he says cautiously. "But are we in danger of closing? Certainly not that I'm aware of."

Whodunit? opened as the second mystery dealer in the world, after an article in the Wall Street Journal about New York's Murder Ink sparked Bourgeau's interest. But since his inspiration closed shop at the end of 2006, Whodunit? is now the oldest mystery bookstore in existence — although Bourgeau admits that it hasn't been exclusively mystery "for at least 10 years now."

"We carry just about everything now, except business and self-help," he says. "Unless you consider religion self-help."

Bourgeau buys used and remainder stocks almost exclusively, and most books — even popular recent best-seller hardcovers — run below $10. He does maintain a case of rare and signed editions, but says that elitism is not one of his priorities.

"Our model is to provide the best book for the cheapest price," he explains. Also integral to his success, he claims, is the table of books he leaves outside in front of the store every day — a simple tactic that sells several hundred books per week.

But Borgeau maintains that buying new stock every day is Whodunit?'s lifeblood. He estimates that on a given day he'll buy at least 100 books.

"If you fall down on your buying, you're out of business," he posits. "With books, as long as you have new, you'll always have customers."

1931 Chestnut St., 215-567-1478, whodunitphilly.com.

Head House Books

"People looked at me like I was marching into a hurricane," says Richard de Wyngaert, of reaction to his decision to open a bookstore in fall 2005. Even before the recession hit, the chains and the Internet had left independent bookstores in a very compromised position. Crazier still was de Wyngaert's insistence on renting a generous space in prime South Street territory — and filling it with nothing but new books, the kinds that Amazon and the big chains often offer at heavily discounted rates.

Still, de Wyngaert noticed what he felt was a "black hole" in the absence of a bookstore in the Society Hill and Queen's Village neighborhoods and was compelled to fill it. He says his entrepreneurial background in asset management and the art business prepared him well for the challenge of running a new bookstore.

"I wanted to have control over the inventory," he says, whereas relying on used sales means relying on whatever comes through the door. "I made the decision to be more of a curator. I decide what fills this store; I like to be able to say, 'These are the things of value that are new.'"

Like his peers, de Wyngaert wants to give his customers something they can't get online or at a chain. His tactics include a series of guest author events — some catered by Whole Foods — and an elegant atmosphere founded on antique furniture and Persian rugs, an atmosphere modeled on the charming New England bookstores he visited during the Head House planning stages.

De Wyngaert's model seems to be working — he says that the loyalty of his customers astounds him, and that he feels like people buy books just as much as ever.

"To the outside observer, things may seem pretty negative," he admits. "But a recession makes communities smaller, more tight-knit, and we are very responsive to this neighborhood's DNA in a way that Amazon or a big chain can't be.

"For a long time, people lost interest in the tangible experience of going to your local bookstore or movie theater, that sense of community," he says. "But I think we're coming back to it."

619 S. Second St., 215-923-9525, headhousebooks.com.

“There was a wonderful moment in the ’80s when people were very intellectually engaged and almost desperate for books,” recalls Deborah Sanford, who founded House of Our Own in 1971. “There was a social quality to bookstores that wasn’t mediated by coffee. Not to disparage coffee shops, but … ”

“The interest was in books,” Greg Schirm continues. Schirm entered Sanford’s life in 1983, and the two — now married — have been co-running the shop and finishing each other’s sentences ever since.

Since its founding, House of Our Own has been curiously located at 39th and Spruce, flanked on either end by rows of UPenn frats. True to its name, its two floors feel as inviting (and spacious) as a home. New books and a few Penn class textbooks are downstairs, while the used collection is on the second floor — though Sanford and Schirm admit that the used books have begun to trickle down the staircase.

And while they reminisce of a time when people “thought and talked to each other about books in real time,” their store remains one of the longest-standing relics from that era — and they have no intention of tapping out anytime soon.

“Thankfully, a lot of old customers have dropped by to show their concern and re-establish themselves here, even people who moved out of Philly long ago,” Sanford says. “That’s been really, really wonderful.”

Sanford and Schirm have made the operation more nimble in recent times by dropping author events and book signings from their budgets and schedules. Schirm says there are simply too many events competing for people’s time to trust the public to show up anymore.

House of Our Own seems to be doing well enough without — the physical collection of literature the couple has accumulated over the years seems to be their biggest draw, and the warm and friendly vibe in the House keeps the customers close. Sanford says she notices fresh faces and familiar friends spending long hours in the store all the time, perusing the many rooms and corridors of literature to the warm AM radio sounds of classical soothers and major-key slow-burns.

“Maybe the recession will have an effect on the chains and the Internet,” she says with a laugh. “Maybe the day of the small bookstore is about to return.”

3920 Spruce St., 215-222-1576

Wooden Shoe Books & Records

Of all the Philly bookstore stories, Wooden Shoe’s is probably the most remarkable. Initially at 20th and Sansom, it was founded in 1976 by a group of council communists, anarchists, war protesters and civil rights activists who were looking for a leftist organization that would stick around longer than the makeshift operations they had all been a part of previously.

Seven presidents, numerous wars and military actions, a couple waves of punk rock and one electrical fire later, the Wooden Shoe now stands at Fifth and South. A perusal of its aisles reveals books with titles like Hollywood v. Hard Core and Hacktivism; fresh vinyl from local bands and used CDs from local collections; and $3 T-shirts championing revolution, anarchy and bicycles. In the corner, a banged-up public-use iBook labeled “The People’s Computer” shows its scars from years spent serving the proletariat.

“Our sales have been declining a lot over the past four of five years,” admits James Generic, a Wooden Shoe volunteer since November 2000. “We’ve been talking about moving and setting up a different model, maybe a bookstore-cafe with a bigger space for events.”

One of Wooden Shoe’s biggest draws is its monthly calendar, which is usually filled with visiting punk musicians, weekly movie nights and author events focusing on everything from interracial strife to talks on how to tour without going broke. Generic says things can get pretty tight, with the cramped bookshelves leaving little room for a crowd.

While no one works full-time at the Wooden Shoe, its all-volunteer staff includes a few dozen members ranging from young teenagers to a few fortysomethings. Generic thinks it’s this strength in numbers that has been and always will be the Wooden Shoe’s saving grace.

“In a collective, if one person gets burnt out, that’s not the end of it,” he says. “A lot of people would give their right arm before they see the store close.”

508 S. Fifth St., 215-413-0999, woodenshoebooks.com.

(jakob.dorof@citypaper.net)

Fiction
Non-Fiction
Short Stories
Talk Wordy to Me