Orange shelves, teal carpet, a patch of black and white checkered tile, and books.
That’s the first image one has when they step into the Book Rack in Mandeville, La. Opened by Marsha Maestri in 1993, the Book Rack is currently in its second location, located next to a Dollar Tree and a Radio Shack. A Barnes & Noble is separated from the Book Rack’s shopping center by a busy highway.
The Book Rack carries hundreds of paperbacks, rents hardbacks by the week and serves regular and new customers every day. The fact that customers can read and return books for trade credit often cuts the price from half-price to a quarter.
Most of the paperbacks the Book Rack carries sell for $3.50 to $5, including those considered best sellers. A back shelf in the store proclaims books with clipped corners are only 75 cents. Some children’s books can be priced as low as 50 cents.
The store is arranged in categories that range from historical romance, mystery and spy thrillers to adventure, westerns, classics, religion and nonfiction.
Little has changed in the last 18 years at the Book Rack, while quite a bit has changed in how people read books with the introduction of e-readers like the Barnes & Noble Nook or Amazon Kindle.
Are used bookstores like the Book Rack on the way out? Or will they continue to exist like newspapers, because people still like the feel of a book in their hands?
I’m a book person,” Pennie Petrie, a long-time Book Rack customer, said. “I like holding a book, the smell. I like turning the page. I also don’t keep my books so the ability to turn them back in and get credit on them to buy more books is good for me.
“I don’t see used bookstores ever going away. Not everyone likes computers. I don’t think books will ever go away. There will always be books.”
Yet for everyone book enthusiast, there is a Nook or Kindle enthusiast.
“I love my Kindle,” Carolyn Rodick, a closer at Winters Title Agency in Mandeville, said. “I’ve read five books since September. I never bought books before, I just borrowed them from my brother. I like having a Kindle and not having to buy books.
“I don’t like holding books. It’s a tactile thing. I never bought them and never would anyway.”
There are two sides to the book versus e-reader debate. What matters to used bookstore owners, like Maestri, is the ability to maintain their businesses.
“I’m making enough money to stay open,” Maestri said. “The margin of profit has dropped. No one likes to see this happen. It’s hard to tell if it’s from both economics and the advent of techno books. I think it is part of both.
“I think people are sheep. It’s a gadget. They want to have the newest technology.”
In July 2010, Amazon claimed to have sold 143 digital books for its e-reader, the Kindle, for every 100 hardback books prior to that month. In May 2011, Amazon said sales of digital books had outstripped U.S. sales of hardbacks on its website for the first time. Publishers Weekly said that in Q1 2011, e-book sales were up 159.8 percent, with all print declining 23.4 percent in the same period.
Barnes & Noble launched the $249 Nook Tablet on Nov. 7. It also sells the $199 Nook Color and $99 Nook Simple Touch reader. The company has been tight-lipped about the exact number of devices it has sold but said sales across all Nook businesses, including digital content, hardware devices and accessories, rose 85 percent.
On Dec. 1, Barnes & Noble Inc. said it plans to invest more heavily in its Nook e-book reader and digital media, even as it reported a third-quarter loss as sales of physical books continued to decline.
The Book Rack is well aware that “brick-and-mortar” bookstores are closing regularly under pressure from online sales and e-books. The American Booksellers Association, a trade group, currently has about 1,900 independent bookstores as members, down from about 2,400 in 2002, according to an article in The New York Times.
“I would say probably we’re down a good 30 percent,” Peggy Garcia, a Book Rack employee for four years, said.
Coming down from its highest gross profit year in 2009, the Book Rack has seen an average day of more than $400 go down to $250.
“You don’t get those days very often at all,” Maestri said, of days above $400.
The introduction of e-readers like the Nook and Kindle does coincide with the Book Rack’s highest gross profit year. The Amazon Kindle was introduced in 2007, but it took some time for people to catch on to the new fad. Two years later, Barnes & Noble released the Nook. The two brands are still competing today, as Barnes & Noble just introduced the Nook Color earlier this year.
E-readers make for faster purchasing of books and the convenience of shopping for them at home, but independent bookstores offer something e-readers don’t: credit and personal service.
“I’m hoping that after a couple of years people that are reading look at the money they’re spending to download books they can’t return and realize they could go to a used bookstore and get credit back for other books,” Maestri said.
Garcia thinks used bookstores serve a very unique purpose because they promote recycling and help people on a budget save money. Smaller bookstores also give customers more personalized attention.
“With a chain like Barnes & Noble, they’re there to just sell you a book.”
“I think there will always be a place for bookstores,” Garcia said. “People like the look on shelves. They collect rare books you can’t get on e-readers. There will probably be far fewer used bookstores but they’ll do it to keep paper books alive and around. I don’t they’ll be making much money. It’ll be a love of the books.”
