Battle of the Bookstores : Huge Emporiums Are Competing for Patrons by Offering Lattes, Lectures and Music

It’s Friday night and the place is humming. A folk singer blasts Dylan-like songs on his heavily amplified guitar. The audience sips cappuccinos and leafs through magazines.

It almost feels like a 1960s coffeehouse--minus the dim lights and haze of cigarette smoke. But this is Borders, the gigantic bookstore that opened in November in the old Conejo Bowl in Thousand Oaks. Like the other huge book-coffee-CD emporiums that have been taking over the literary landscape, it’s a place to schmooze with friends, hang out for hours reading in a comfy easy chair, hear live music, take in a lecture--and maybe even meet someone special.

Borders is the county’s newest mega-bookstore. Barnes & Noble opened a 15,000-square-foot store in Ventura two years ago and began serving up cappuccino and everything from poetry readings to Scrabble tournaments.

Crown Books countered with an 11,600-square-foot “super store” in Simi Valley in August. In April, Crown will open another super store--this one 15,000 square feet--in Thousand Oaks, just down the street from Borders.

Just when you thought the Conejo Valley was buried in lattes and literature, get this: Barnes & Noble plans to open a super store in the newly approved Thousand Oaks Towne center mall in November.

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So the battle of the bookstores begins. And even book lovers are wondering: Are there enough readers out there for all those books?

Store executives answer that simply by pointing to other locales. “Look at Redondo Beach,” said Barnes & Noble district manager Doc Rogers. “There are seven major bookstores within a two-mile radius and they’re all doing pretty well.”

There’s also Santa Barbara, where Barnes & Noble, Borders and Earthling Bookshop rub elbows on State Street. It’s Rogers’ view that the market for books doesn’t hinge on a set number; it just grows with the arrival of more bookstores. It’s sort of a build-it-and-they-will-read approach.

Jim Milliot, business editor of Publisher’s Weekly, doesn’t paint such a rosy picture. Some analysts believe “we’re starting to hit the ceiling,” he said. It’s true the super stores have increased the reading public, he said.

“We’re looking at a bigger pie than two years ago, but it’s a finite pie,” he said. “We expect in 1996 to see some serious shaking out of everybody.”

But you have to look beyond the super stores to get the whole picture, according to Amy Ryan, retail analyst for Prudential Securities. While 176 super stores opened in 1995, the chains closed another 231 mall stores.

“Are we over stored?” she asked. “I don’t think so, but competition is increasing.”

Until the big boys moved in, Ventura County’s bookstores were limited to pocket-sized chain stores in the mall and a sprinkling of independently owned shops. They didn’t keep late hours or serve coffee. But the independents, especially, prided themselves on personalized service and a thoughtful selection of out-of-the mainstream works.

Now big is in. Borders is housed in a remodeled bowling alley--almost the size of the Simi Valley Library, with about the same number of volumes. It’s open until midnight on weekends.

Partly because of the boom in these super-sized stores nationally, bookstore sales are flourishing. Sales in 1994 climbed 5.7% over the previous year, according to the American Booksellers Assn. But since 1993, more than 100 independents have closed up.

“The chains have expanded the market but they’ve also saturated the market,” said the association’s Len Vlahos. “The business has to give somewhere.”

The association is fighting back. Earlier this month it filed its second anti-trust discrimination lawsuit against another publisher, this one Random House, for giving price breaks to the chains, a practice that allows them to pass discounts on to buyers.

“When Barnes & Noble first opened, our sales went way down,” said Ed Elrod, co-owner of the Ventura Bookstore. “In the last two years they’ve come up, but not to where they were.”

Elrod has owned the downtown store for 18 years. At 5,000 square feet and 60,000 titles, it’s a fraction of the super stores’ size. He pipes in classical music, but other than that, the ambience comes from the store’s resident dog and parrot and a staff that knows books, even obscure titles.

“We still feel books should be foremost,” he said. He scoffs at the super chains that stock the same huge inventory nationwide, with a few exceptions.

“They give the impression they are well stocked,” he said. But they don’t carry slow-moving subjects, like poetry, and foreign or local authors, he said. On his shelves you’ll find local history publications and a stock of books that area teachers, counselors and churches have asked to have on hand. He has even carried obscure material from the Masonic Lodge. They’re the sort of books that generate a “blank stare” from clerks at the super stores, he said.

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But like other independents, he’s made changes to keep pace. He extended his hours, installed seven big chairs, started a newsletter, and added more events, including a monthly book-discussion group. In 1994 he hosted Gloria Steinem for a book signing and 1,200 people lined up outside the store.

But Borders is the “new kid on the block” right now, he said. “Everyone wants to play there.”

There’s a lot to play with. Borders sprawls over 33,000 square feet, offering 150,000 book titles, about 60,000 compact disks and newspapers like Japan Times and New York’s Village Voice. Listening posts with earphones are scattered throughout the music section so you can check out CDs before you buy them.

The store has its own community-relations coordinator, Nancy Ingram, who books events for the store, which she likens to a “cozy, cultural gathering place.”

On Monday night Sergei Khrushchev, son of the former Soviet leader, was at the store signing books and making political observations. Last month Steve Allen played the piano and told show biz stories.

Hate football? Drop by Sunday afternoon for a “Not a Super Bowl Party,” a potpourri of classical guitar and folk music, arts and crafts for kids, and a dramatic reading.

For children, the store goes beyond the usual story hours. On one Saturday this month, youngsters arrived in pajamas for a pancake breakfast.

On Friday nights the store tries to showcase local musicians who appeal to the younger crowd. Thursdays are usually reserved for jazz, with a house jazz band, the Dave Burns Quartet, playing once a month in the store’s Cafe Espresso, which dishes out cheesecake, biscotti and brownies along with designer coffees.

The store staff takes a relaxed approach to coffee. They don’t care if you leaf through books and magazines in the cafe while you sip espresso. Nor do they mind if you roam the store with cup in hand. “We encourage it,” Ingram said.

They also don’t keep track of how long you stay. “One of our goals is to provide a place like a library where you can drink coffee and listen to music.” It’s not uncommon, she said, for 8-year-olds to spend half the day reading in the children’s section, where they can prop big pillows up against the carpeted steps of a mini amphitheater.

That’s where Steve Yoshinaga was sprawled next to his 4-year-old son on a recent Friday night. “This is a fantastic place to come to,” he said, noting the dearth of bookstores before in Thousand Oaks. “The selection is what we come for. When it first opened, we spent $100 here.”

Brad Capener was perusing magazines, waiting for singer-songwriter Earl Grey to rev up his guitar and harmonica. “I come here twice a week,” he said. “I always thought Thousand Oaks needed something like this--a place to sit and read and hang out. Before, it didn’t have anything.”

It’s the same sort of scene at Barnes & Noble in Ventura. “On weekend nights we see whole families come in,” said Deborah Casotti, store manager. “They each look at what they want to.”

For some people, going to the bookstore has become a favorite evening outing. “They’re looking for something to do that’s clean, good for you, inexpensive and (educational),” she said.

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On a recent Saturday afternoon, about 30 people listened to author Doyle Barnett dole out tips on how couples can communicate better. Writing and reading groups meet there, and once a month the store hosts its Goosebumps Club--games and activities based on R.L. Stine’s popular horror books.

Last Saturday, Internet users chatted via modem at the store with others at shops in San Antonio, Miami and Seattle about Bill Gates’ new book, “The Road Ahead.”

The store has dabbled in music too. Last fall, about 60 people crammed into the store’s little coffee nook to hear violin virtuoso Andrew Huang. On Saturday, banjo musician Jerry Price, who played with Joan Baez, will pick a few tunes and talk about the banjo.

“It’s unfortunate, but we’ve replaced the library in many ways,” said Tim Pompey, who schedules events at the store.

Crown Books doesn’t do coffee, but tries instead to locate near a coffee outlet. The chain, known more for its lower prices than its ambience, will also try to woo customers with book signings and other events after it opens in April on Moorpark Road near Thousand Oaks Boulevard.

“We’ll have as many as I can get there,” said Leanne DuPay, Crown’s marketing coordinator. DuPay said the competition is rigorous. “It seems like when we open a store, they open a store. In some places we’re just blocks away. But even though we’re competing, we’re all a little different.”

That may be so for the super stores, but what about the independents? More will close, Publisher’s Weekly’s Milliot said. Nine or 10 have shut down nationwide in the past couple of weeks, he said.

“But there will be a viable independent network when all is said and done,” he said. “It’s starting to slowly dawn on publishers that it’s a good idea to have them.”