Down, but not out

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

The national slump in retail sales may have slammed bookstores too, but some independent sellers are seeing signs of hope.

‘I’m really heartened,’ said Allison Hill, vice president and general manager of Vroman’s Bookstore. ‘Eric Schlosser was here, and we had hundreds of schoolchildren who were dying to meet him.’

Schlosser, author of the bestseller “Fast Food Nation,” was on hand Friday to sign copies of “Chew on This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food,” written with Charles Wilson and aimed at the teen and preteen audience. An even bigger draw for the Pasadena bookstore was the May 7 appearance of “Fight Club” author Chuck Palahniuk, who signed books until 2 a.m. the next morning for a crowd of 700 people who’d come to buy his latest, “Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey.” “Talk about author as rock star,” Hill said of Palahniuk. “Some people had driven for six hours to wait in line all day and all night to get their book signed. The average age was 20 -- the demographic that people say aren’t reading books. I heard people in line say to him, ‘You got me reading.’ ” Indeed, challenged by the author’s website, several dozen people -- women and men -- turned out in wedding gowns to win a mystery prize. “He also gave out inflatable moose heads if you knew some of the trivia or characters from his books,” Hill said. Overall bookstore sales plummeted 6.8% in March, marking the third consecutive month of declines, according to Publisher’s Weekly and the U.S. Census Bureau. Overall, sales for the first quarter of 2007 were down 4% to $4.19 billion. At Dutton’s Brentwood Books, owner Doug Dutton said sales have generally been flat, with only a few breakout books generating reader interest, including Walter Isaacson’s “Einstein: His Life and Universe.” Dutton said that hoped-for interest in former CIA Director George Tenet’s book hasn’t materialized but that “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union,” Michael Chabon’s newest novel, “is as hot as it gets.” Sales at Vroman’s were up in March, but Hill conceded that business has been relatively flat over the last year, thanks in part to the myriad options available today for people to get information and entertainment. The trick, Hill said, is to reach out to readers in new ways. Vroman’s has a MySpace page and a blog. Inside the store, there is a section called “The Edge.” “If you have to ask what it is, you’re outside the demographic,” she said. “I still see hope that with these gestures, books will be reinvigorated and folded into this cultural shift.” Kristina Lindgren