Let’s remember when the Seattle Mystery Bookshop closed its doors for good, on this day in 2017 (September 30)
The Seattle Mystery Bookshop was a magical place that sold Agatha Christie paperbacks like Costco sells tubs of mac and cheese. I spent an inordinately large amount of money in there, but, alas, not enough to keep it going. Because nice things can be had by no one, it closed its doors two years ago today.
Announcing the closure, owner JB Dickey wrote on the store’s blog:
The Seattle Mystery Bookshop will close on Saturday, September 30th at the end of the day.
Why? There are so many reasons. Blame Amazon? Sure, that’s the easy thing to say but the massive changes in the world of bookselling are far larger than that. In fact, the changes in the over-all economy make it a much, much bigger story.
To be fair, you have to look back to the rise of mega-stores like Barnes & Noble. They were exciting but they began the phenomena of deeply discounting books. They wanted bodies in the stores, they wanted customers to buy books and CDs and calendars and to drink coffee and browse magazines and they were willing to use books as a loss leader to get you in there. And people went. There was no way for small independents to compete with what a large corporation could do, or what they demanded from the publishers. Publishers paid more attention to them because they had to. Publishers let them do things (claiming a certain percentage of damage from each shipment without detailing which and what; getting placement fees for putting books in prominent places; author events denied to small shops) not allowed to the small independents. That would come back to bite them when Borders collapsed and left a significant hole in the publishers’ business model.
The next blow to independent booksellers came from the rise of e-books and here, too, publishers made a terrible mistake. For decades, publishers released some books in hardcover and some as paperback originals — mass market paperbacks to be precise. In a year, the books in hardcover would usually be released in paperback. That way, those who could afford to buy hardcovers and who didn’t want or need to wait could get it when it was new. Those who couldn’t afford the hardcover price knew they could get it at the library or get it in paperback in a year. This was a model that allowed all budgets to get books — a true mass market for books.
I loved that place and miss it every day.
For more reading:
