How independent bookshops are still thriving, even in the age of Amazon
Remember the Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks vehicle You've Got Mail? The one that's less irritating than Sleepless In Seattle?
Meg plays the delightful owner of a beloved local children's bookshop in NYC — the kind of place where it's always story time and the staff gush endearingly about Goodnight Moon. While Tom plays the cynical heir to a book megastore chain that's opening nearby.
As the megastore crushes the charming local retailer, Tom and Meg start corresponding anonymously via email, and fall for one another — when she finds out, it gets awkward, until of course they end up together.
The twist (sorry for the spoiler, but it came out in 1998) is that the book plutocrat doesn't swoop in and save Meg's store out of love. Not even a Hollywood suspension of disbelief could save small shops from megastores that are cheaper, sell everything — and serve coffee.
Fortunately, consumer tastes untwisted that twist. In reality, Hanks' Fox Books chain would likely have gone under more than a decade ago, eviscerated by ebooks and internet delivery, while Meg's Shop Around The Corner would likely be thriving.
Our love of friendly, knowledgeable, local booksellers has turned out to be more enduring than our love of a cut-price James Patterson.
The big bookshop boom
Every book-lover loves great independent bookshops — the sort where you can wander around for hours, torn because you want to purchase every book you see.
You'll find books you forgot you wanted to buy next to fabulous newcomers whose work you can't resist. And if you can't decide, or, due to your own personal good taste, are stuck for a gift for, say, the vampire-romance lover in your life, the staff will recommend something they've read personally.
My local megastore was the massive Collins Booksellers at Sydney's Broadway, which opened with the centre in 1998 — the same year as You've Got Mail. It closed in 2005 and was purchased by Dymocks, which then had 86 shops around Australia. But that didn't last — it's been a JB Hi-Fi for years.
Dymocks relocated to a smaller shop in the mall — but that closed last month. I can only count 46 shops on their website today — a major decline for one of our best-known booksellers. The venerable Angus & Robertson chain had 170 stores in 2006. Now it's a website, owned by Booktopia.
Then there was Borders, the now-defunct American chain that opened huge outlets across Australia. I remember my visit to the one at Melbourne's Jam Factory in 1999. Not only did it seem to have every book currently in print, along with a massive magazine section and a cafe, but people could linger reading for hours, and buying seemed optional. It blew my mind.
Even then, I vaguely understood that Borders' trademark deal of selling three bestsellers for the price of two had to mean someone somewhere was getting paid less, and that the local booksellers I've gotten to know growing up might not be able to match those retailers' scale, range or prices.
Even though I enjoyed Borders, I was uneasy when one opened opposite the iconic Readings in Melbourne's Lygon St. The local David, it seemed, would surely be crushed by the American deep-discounting Goliath.
But it was Borders whose 26 stores went under.
"When Borders came in, they said quite publicly that they wanted to put us out of business, and our customers took it personally," says Joe Rubbo, managing director of Readings.
"It was scary for a moment there, but we owe our customers a great debt. They stood by us."
Why the book megastore declined
While the American chain that inspired You've Got Mail, Barnes & Noble, still has more than 500 stores, there simply isn't a book megastore chain here anymore. If you want a vast book emporium, only a few CBD flagships have survived.
"You need to genuinely be in touch with the communities that you're serving, and that's pretty hard in a megastore and it's pretty hard in a shopping mall," Gleebooks co-owner and director David Gaunt says.
During their nearly five decades in business, the independent bookshop has seen many chain-store competitors come and go around its location in Glebe, Sydney,
The business has since expanded to outlets in Dulwich Hill and Blackheath, in the Blue Mountains.
"People were astonished when we, as a city bookshop, opened in Blackheath," Gaunt says.
"It works because there was a community ready to welcome a bookshop and happy to support it for the long-term.
"There's a love of books at the core of every child that's ever had their imagination spiked, fed and nourished by books.
"So the idea is to remind adults to plant and nourish the seed, and make sure people stay in touch and gain from a love of reading."
We still love books
We haven't stopped buying books. The market is in surprisingly good health, given the explosion of streaming and gaming that vie for our leisure time. If we ignore lockdown sales, the Australian book market is up 18 per cent in value between 2019 and 2023 — and given that e-books cost less than print, it's clear that we are hardly dumping print for e-readers, either.
Admittedly, plenty of indies have gone under, and you can still buy the most popular books at far below RRP at the likes of Kmart and Big W. The retailer might not have written a little card saying how much they loved it, but it doesn't matter if you would have bought the new Jane Harper regardless.
Amazon has taken sales from bricks and mortar shops too, of course, as has Booktopia. But browsing a website is far less enjoyable than browsing physical aisles — and they don't have a lovely gift wrapping service that supports a local charity, like so many booksellers do these days.
So while the market has undergone considerable upheaval, many of our most beloved local bookshops trade on, undaunted by the rise and fall of megastores, the slow death of major chains, and the e-reader revolution.
Dom Knight is the author of eight books, very few of which are available in any bookshop.