LAWRENCE JOURNAL-WORLD
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
AUGUST 1996 43F
Lawrence book sellers brace for superstore
MIKE YODER/JOURNAL-WORLD PHOTO
- Will Lawrence's book market survive the arrival of a chain store? Some bookstore owners give their opinions.
Jon Bunch, 11. Lawrence studies a book at locally owned The Raven Bookstore,8 E. Seventh, while his mother, Joy Bunch, searches the shelves.
BY MARK LUCE
JOURNAL-WORLD WRITER
Citing skyrocketing return rates and deceptive expansion, experts are claiming that the national book market is the worst it has been in 20 years.
However, according to local booksellers, business couldn't be better. Overwhelmingly, the merchants claimed that while Kansas University certainly helped move the book market in Lawrence, a large, highly educated book-buying public underlies the various stores' success.
"If we had to exist on what faculty and students bought, we wouldn't be in business," said Pat Kehde, co-owner of The Raven Bookstore, 8 E. Seventh.
One of the reasons the Lawrence market can support so many new and used bookstores is that the shops are nicely niched to cater to specific audiences. Kehde said.
The possibility that two national book superstore chains might open stores in Lawrence has Kehde and John Hastie, coowner of Terra Nova Bookstore, 920 Mass., wondering what the future may hold. National trends indicate that when superstores move in, the smaller independents lack the buying power to compete and often fold.
Kehde said that in the "Testosterone Bookstore Wars," businesses combat one another with the assumption that bigger is better.
"They don't care about books, they care about volume," she said. "Unfortunately they are creating serious problems for small presses and small bookstores."
Building a market
Hastie said increased sales at Terra Nova are partly attributable to the closing of Adventure Books last April. However healthy the Lawrence market may be, Hastie said it would be difficult to support one, let alone a pair, of large chain stores.
"Building a market takes a long time, and I am not sure these bookstores would wait around that long unless they grow very quickly and get the numbers they want," he said.
Jay Peterson of Hasting's Books Music and Video, Iowa and Clinton Pkwy., echoed that sales have been strong, pointing to higher numbers of hardback sales and a film-influenced return to classics. On the subject of potential new competitors, Peterson was split.
"It would open up more book titles that are harder to find," he said. "A new Borders may not be the best thing to happen, but it wouldn't hurt anyone to be exposed to one."
Lisa Eitner, supervisor and lead buyer for the Mt. Oread Bookshop at the Kansas Union, said sales are steady, but she was unsure of the effect of new competitors.
"It seems to be commonly thought that with large buying power and the ability to offer large discounts,the superstores would initially attract customers," she said. "At some later point there may be a return to the independents because of specialization and more consistent customer service."
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Diane Meredith recently opened The Dusty Bookshelf, a large, general interest used bookstore in the heart of downtown Lawrence at 708 Mass.
Meredith said that the business outgrew its walls in Manhattan and when the space in Lawrence came up, she jumped at the opportunity.
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"It was a gut instinct. It felt right," she said.
However, new books aren't all that Lawrence offers.
After working as a clerk at the store in Manhattan, Meredith bought the shop in 1987. She said she hopes that the Lawrence store will take on a distinctly different feel from the one in Manhattan.
Local personality
"We want the store to have its own personality," she said. And that happens because of what Lawrence folks read, bring in and buy."
"I'm going to stay no matter what happens," Hartog said. And personally, I am glad to see another used bookstore in town."
Both John Hood of J. Hood Booksellers, 1401 Mass., and Howard Hartog of Vagabond Bookman, 1113 Mass., said that the used book market in town is robust and that they aren't terribly concerned about the effects of superstores on their highly specialized businesses.
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