I stopped buying compact disks the day I bought my iPod in the mid-2000s. I was never interested in the bulky plastic jewel cases that clutter up apartments, and my favorite CDs always sport deep scratches, making them nearly unlistenable. Sure, sometimes the cover art is interesting, but it’s not crucial to the music.
Books? Books are a different story.
I am a book fanatic. I will never give up my physical obsession for a digital reader. I hoard books. I dog-ear pages. I take margin notes in pencil. I stack books on my shelves as trophies of my intellectualism. I like the way they look and smell. I like the heft of my purse when a paperback novel is tucked inside.
I recognize I am increasingly isolated in this love, but I didn’t expect Hayley Wright, a vibrant blond, avid paddleboarder and owner of Between the Covers Book Store, to dismiss my preference for physical books to e-readers as antiquated.
“Get on a plane and see how many books you actually see,” she said. “I’m a tech nerd,” she added, “so I get it. Why would the book industry be anything different than what happened to music stores?”
Wright has weathered the decline in readership of physical books since 2007, when she and her husband bought a restored historic house on Delaware Avenue at Bond Street and moved in Between the Covers. She watched the Camalli Book Company, a small bookshop in the Westside Village Shopping Center, close in August 2011. She also watched her customers evaporate because of e-reader and e-book sales.
“I really noticed it in the last quarter of 2012,” she explained. “I was down 20 percent, and the first quarter of 2013 I was down 35 percent. I considered turning it into a coffee shop. But,” she added defiantly, “I opened a bookstore because I love books.”
Wright tried to keep up with the mushrooming interest in digital books; last year she linked an online store to her website. But it wasn’t enough.
“Devices like the iPad are hardwired to use the iBooks website, and the Kindle is hardwired to use Amazon,” Wright explained. Her online store, she said, “was a couple extra steps, so people wouldn’t do it.”
Unfortunately, the declining interest in quaint corner bookstores—not to mention bookstores of all sizes—is bringing Between the Covers’ run to an end. Wright plans to close the shop June 1.
As Between the Covers prepares to shut its doors, other local independent bookshops like Dudley’s are struggling to stay afloat. In response to the book-buying decline, Dudley’s has taken a neo-Luddite approach, adding a café that sells beer and wine, creating an area for group meetings, and offering live music.
“Coming into Dudley’s is like going back in time,” owner Rebecca Singer said. “We don’t have a computerized inventory and we don’t plan on having a computerized inventory. We have to go look for the book, but people love that. They love the pacing in here.”
Dudley’s also benefits from a gaggle of volunteers that help to keep the shop running, including former owner Terri Cumbie, who opened the store in 2008.
“We need independent bookstores,” Cumbie asserted. “Otherwise, big publishers will decide what we read. It’s independent bookstores who find all of those great little books.”
As Dudley’s struggles on, the shelves at Between the Covers are thinning. Wright is attempting to clear out the inventory—furniture and all—and said she will continue to discount prices until the shop closes.
“It will be interesting to see what happens in the book world outside of this rapidly declining bookstore,” Wright said as she peered out the oversized windows onto sunny Delaware Avenue. “Meanwhile, I’ll be going to Sisters to buy my books” at independent seller Paulina Springs Books.
Support local bookstores!
Bookmark, 228 NE Greenwood Ave.
Dudley’s BookShop Café, 135 NW Minnesota Ave.
The Kilns Bookstore, 550 NW Industrial Way, #44
Open Book, 155 NE Greenwood Ave.
Paulina Springs Books, 252 W Hood Ave., Sisters & 422 SW 6th St., Redmond.
Pegasus Books, 105 NW Minnesota Ave.
Shelf Life, 249 NW 6th St. Redmond.
This article appears in May 16-22, 2013.
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I am a buyer of books. Lots of them. I didn’t buy a single book at Between the Covers. Not one. Why? Because they made it impossible for me to get in the door to do business with them. I have MS and use mobility aids and apparently the owners of the building determined it was not enough important to them to have folks like me as a customer. I feel sad when a local business closes. But I feel even more sad when they have never opened their doors to the minority population to which I belong.
Wow…just wow…You truly can’t please everyone. Forget about the struggles that every small business owner faces. Did you ever bring this up to this particular business? I mean, Lord knows you actually speak to someone in person rather then post a comment after the fact. Did you ever consider the cost to the business owner of making it accessible? Permits, contractors, etc? Probably not. I truly am sympathetic to your condition but commenting negatively on a local business closure is truly distasteful.
It is a nationally registered historic building which restricts changing the outside appearance. Two people from the city came by to see what could be done and the only option would have been for them to deed us eight inches of the public sidewalk on Bond Street- in order to keep grade, the ramp would have gone from the back door to the front of the bookstore. That wouldn’t fly with historic preservation and the city didn’t seem to keen on deeding us the eight inches. I’m a kind human being and would never take pleasure in denying anyone access. I’m sorry you never got to see inside my bookstore. The people who restored this building did a wonderful job and while historic preservation helped in that regard, it is also fallible in other areas.
I’d like to stand up for BTC here… I can tell you that the owner of this business is one of the kindest, most inclusive women I have ever met. She constantly went out of her way to make books “accessible” to the community both in and out of her store. If you want to play the disability access game, take it up with the City of Bend and the Bend Historic Society. It took two years to even get a sign with the business name hung out front. Access ramps were a bureaucratic nightmare and the building is legally exempted from providing them because of it’s age and historical status. Do not throw blind blame for an issue you clearly haven’t researched properly…or at all.