No, they never went away, but independent bookstores are in growth mode. As half the book industry has moved to online purchases and ebooks, a good portion of the other half is now shopping indie. CNBC
reports:
Quote:
"Sales from independent bookstores in 2012 were up eight percent over 2011," said Dan Cullen a spokesman for the American Booksellers Association, a nonprofit trade group of independent bookstores.
"We've got people opening new bookstores and people buying into existing ones," he said. Talk of the death of independent bookstores "as a result of the big-box stores was premature at best," he added.
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Some interesting numbers:
Quote:
About one in five books sold last year was an e-book, accounting for $3 billion of the $15 billion in total publishing revenues, according to the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group.
Meanwhile, audio books are going through an explosive period, with sales up 21.8 percent last year from 2011, to $241 million. Amazon bought the biggest maker of audio books, Audible, in 2008 and has the lion's share of the market.
This comes as book sales are in general decline worldwide, with sales in the U.S. down 9.3 percent last year.
Independents hold just 10 percent of the overall book market compared with Barnes & Nobles's 20 percent and Amazon's 29 percent, according to the ABA.
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B&N's numbers include *their* online and ebook sales so it sounds as if the Indies are cumulatively the equivalent to B&N's storefronts. Which suggests that lots of smaller stores at more sites *is* a viable strategy for a chain. It certainly seems to work for Half-Price books. (Though I'm not sure I'd count them as indie as the report does. They're family owned but... 116 stores/16 states...)
A trend worth watching.
(image by secretlondon123
via Flickr)