Slope Losing Another Small Bookstore

I don't live in Park Slope but I do look forward to coming to 7th ave and checking out the independent shops and bookstores. I'm very sad to hear this. Change is happening everywhere.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 11:40 AM

please please please another bank!!!

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 11:42 AM

Is 7th ave going to become a suburban stripmall?

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 11:44 AM

Sigh. Seventh Avenue continues the long slide into overpriced uselessness.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 11:45 AM

"Is 7th ave going to become a suburban stripmall?"

No. It already has.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 11:54 AM

Yep, I guess yuppies don't read...or they don't read used books. I live in the hood and find this really disturbing. Sigh.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 11:57 AM

Bummer. Heights books in BH may follow suit with the crazy rents on Montague. I always wonder how that place stays in business selling used books anyhow. Place is a mess so even if I wanted something, I can rarely find it.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 12:08 PM

I hate to be that guy on the comment section, but Park Slope burnout business owners have been living high on the hog for a long time. God forbid they cater to the community. So boo hoo that another cash only, doesn't serve coffee, doesn't have programs for kids, doesn't keep inventory business is going under.

By the way I make a huge effort to spend all my money in local owned business. Businesses that refuse to accept the changes all around them will always fail, unless they own the buliding and in those cases the renters pay the price. So again the community gets the sh*t stick.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 12:38 PM

Slopers don't care about having options beyond Barnes & Noble. They do care a great deal about being able to say that they have options beyond Barnes & Noble, but that's not the same thing.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 12:40 PM

Amazon has good books about small business management.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 12:41 PM

12:38...i sadly kind of agree with you. i live in the slope and always try to buy local if i can. even if i'm in manhattan and really want something then and now, i always think about (and usually do) wait and think if i can buy it somewhere in my neighborhood even if it means waiting a day or two. it just feels good to support the locals.

it's disspointing when you do try to do that but the businesses just are keeping up with their end of the bargain.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 12:53 PM

Um, Park Slope Books did accept credit cards. And has one of the best inventories of any bookstore I've seen in Brooklyn. So they don't sell coffee, they aren't a coffee shop. And programming for children, give me a break, why should they *have* to do that to stay in business.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 12:58 PM

I went in there looking for two books in the past year. Both were NY Times bestsellers and they had neither.

Barnes and Noble did.

And therein lies the problem.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 1:01 PM

this is the same problem that record stores have.

its a dead industry. You can get better stuff online or just steal it. Barnes and Nobles has been closing stores as well. This has nothing to do with park slope or the people in it. This is happening everywhere.

also Barnes and Nobles has the only decent magazine rack in the area. Kinda sucks.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 1:06 PM

1:01 hits the nail on the head. Not having enough inventory. Also, the interiors of the independent bookstores are cluttered, dusty, and have not been updated it seems in ten years. Which is perfect for those of us who love to browse through stacks and go deep into the nooks and crannies of cluttered bookstores. But fruitless searches through cluttery piles don't appeal to everybody and you don't bring kids into those spaces either. It's catering to only one kind of book buyer, so it fails.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 1:09 PM

1:06, the point about the magazine rack is so true. If these independent bookstores set aside space to have large magazine racks, with harder to find great magazines, it would increase their traffic tenfold.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 1:10 PM

I think they should allow smoking in these indy bookshops.

Pot smoking.

They'd do a killer biz.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 1:20 PM

Why is it considered so great to buy books from "independent" sellers? My main concern is price and selection and if a chain gives me that better than a smaller store, guess where I'm going to shop?

I agree with the above posters. In this age of online shopping, these places are becoming obselete, though used booksellers can benefit from online business.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 1:47 PM

Well-sad that it is closing. But, truth is, online shopping is hurting a lot of businesses. I know my first concern is getting a good deal and if I get a better deal online, I will buy it online instead of overpaying my hard earned money to a neighborhood store just to keep them in business. I even buy online from Barnes and Noble because the prices are better than at the store and I only live a couple of blocks from the store!

I just hope another cell phone store or bank doesn't open up here!

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 1:54 PM

I think the days of banks opening a branch on every corner might be coming to an end.

That might be a positive thing in all this credit crisis stuff.

I think we've actually seen a lot of really nice stuff opening in Park Slope lately (Moim, Flight001 coming soon, Cafe Tapeo, Canaille, etc).

Let's hope the good times keep a coming...

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 1:57 PM

please please please another real estate office!!!

Seriously, as much as i hate to admit it, these businesses think they can stay in business on 15 and 20 year old business plans (if any at all) and they just can't. Now, i'm not advocationg "programming for kids" (even those of us with kids want some non kid-friendly places) but just some updates and thought for what the customer might want would work. rents are sky high and the days of opening a store so you and you friends can hang out while making a bit of change are over.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 2:02 PM

And when all the book distribution in this country is in the hands of Barnes and Noble and Borders and their online arms, I'm sure you'll still be happy with their value and selection.

Wake up, the fate of small book sellers is connected to small publishers and without them, ALL you'll be able to find are NY TImes best sellers.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 2:02 PM

Barnes and Noble can order any book your heart could desire, 2:02.

Don't be so naive.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 2:11 PM

So can a small bookstore, but everyone on this post seems to be about convinience. If they don't stock them in the first place it hurts small publishers.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 2:14 PM

sniffle, sniffle.

they had the best buggy whips and lady's hat trimming service there as well.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 2:19 PM

Looking ahead, I'd say a pawn shop is a good opportunity.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 2:26 PM

i hope it's a nice ethiopian restaurant.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 2:41 PM

I'm not paying full price for hardcover bestsellers when they are 30% +another 10% using my B&N card at barnes and noble.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 2:53 PM

How does Heights Books stay in business? I always assumed they owned the building or something

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 2:54 PM

i vote for a pet supply store
or a kosher deli

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 2:54 PM

Well, this place in question didn't sell new books at all. If you're really interested in saving money, buy used. Oh, all the used bookstores on 7th ave are closing, nevermind.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 3:02 PM

are there any small bookstores anywhere that are successful and not in the crisis of closing?

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 3:08 PM

Here's another problem with used books in Park Slope.

I've FOUND more than enough used reading material walking around the neighborhood on peoples stoops.

In fact...a couple times there were books I was really looking to read and happened upon them coincidentally up around Berkeley and 7th.

Seriously...there are SO many free books lying around all over the place, why pay for them?

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 3:08 PM

Why go to an independent book store at all when every weekend there are 25 stoop sales in PS with tons of old dusty books for sale for 25cents anyway - or else people just leave them on the stoop for free.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 3:10 PM

12:40 has it SO right....

and in other news a store selling 8track tapes on Union and a Fed Ex Zipmail location also closed.

People love to complain meanwhile more than 90% of the stores in Park Slope are non-national chains.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 3:13 PM

3:13 has evidently never actually been to the Slope.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 3:24 PM

@3:24,

What are you talking about? 3:13 is probably pretty close. How many national chain stores can you name in Park Slope?

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 3:30 PM

no actually, 3:24...you'd be hard pressed to find a neighborhood in gentrified brooklyn and certainly manhattan that has more mom and pops than park slope.

because of very small storefronts, park slope has a pretty vast array of small non-national chains, actually.

to not find a gap and only one starbucks in a neighborhood as large and wealthy as park slope is quite a feat.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 3:31 PM

3:24 - please enlighten me where are all these national chains you refer? Not on 7th Ave and not on 5th thats for sure.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 3:37 PM

I have worked in the book business for 25 years and, although it's true that independent bookstores suffered greatly when the chains first expanded in the early 1990s, currently they are doing better business -- at least when expressed as growth over previous years' sales -- than their big box rivals.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 4:18 PM

yes, that must be why they are all going out of business.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 4:28 PM

4:18, that sounds like a fishy statistic. Does it include bookstore that have gone out of business, or account that B&N etc may have plateaued, while independent stores are working from the budget figures that have gone down over the last decade due to the chains.

Does it factor B&N and Amazon as a single juggernaut?

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 4:32 PM

to 11:57
The funny thing about Park Slope is that there's used books - GOOD used books - for free all over the place. People leave them out on their sidewalks to recycle among the neighbors.
Between that and stoop sales, the used market (for under $1) is covered.

I've bought a couple of books at the soon to be departed store, and I'm sad to see them go.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 5:19 PM

Jeez its 2007 - who the hell cares if their are independent book stores...

Any book you want in the world (in print or out) is available with few clicks of the mouse, not to mention that finding places to discuss/discover books, literature and subjects are also offered at a myriad of places online and off.

You know there are virtually no typerwritter stores left either!

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 5:23 PM

honestly, we could use a nice sex shop in this space.

i can't find good lube anywhere in this neighborhood.

zzzzzzzz

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 6:02 PM

Don't you ever go to 5th Ave, 6:02? What about that sex shop on 5th right across from the public school (ironically) somewhere down around 5th street?

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 7:56 PM

will have to check it out.
walked by, but always thought it looked a little on the feminine side.
thought it was a lost relic of a bygone era when lezzies used to rule the slope.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 9:21 PM

Wow. Pretty sad commentary from a group of Brownstone lovers. I expected a different sensibility. While we're turning our backs on independent bookstores in a neighborhood that built it's brand on independent thinking, why not tear down these housing "dinosaurs" and replace them with more convenient metal and glass towers. So much for the beauty and inherent value in a business that creates and sustains life on the street. Hey let's just bring Walmart to town. They have cheap prices and a deep selection and when they open entire business districts crumble. Who cares if Barnes and Nobel hires folks that wouldn't know a quality book if it were read to them. I didn't see any help from B&N after 911. Thank you Community Bookstore. I'll be there to support with my family in tow. Parenting by example. This thread more than any other illuminates how different the new Park Slope is from that great nabe it was in the 90's. Yet another reason to keep gentrification under some control. Get a little money and get straight STUPID!

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 10:09 PM

Lezzie always rule.

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 10:11 PM

Yes, 10:09, bring on Walmart.

BTW, the Community Bookstore does not sell lube, but Duane Reade does. Long live the chains!

Posted by: guest at November 5, 2007 10:30 PM

park slope has the nicest shops and restaurants anywhere in brooklyn. Who can deny this?

Posted by: guest at November 6, 2007 12:42 AM

Park Slope is a victim of its own success. Rising rents on 7th Ave as well as 5th will, over time, drive out every single business that makes the neighborhood great. It's not the fault of residents of the "new Park Slope". It's the greed of the landlords.

Posted by: guest at November 6, 2007 1:06 AM

Excellent and those of u s in other Brooklyn neighborhoods will get the better small stores.

:)

Posted by: guest at November 6, 2007 2:40 AM

"Greed of the landlords"?! What's that about?

Generally, everyone is entitled to find his/her best economic niche. You work where the total compensation package (financial plus psychic) is best for you. You shop where the total experience feels best for you. You choose housing that works best for you. The storekeeper chooses the best prices he can for what she sells?

Why should the landlord should be villified for seeking the best price for her property? Does she wear a scarlet "L' on her shirt?

Perhaps you feel that we should protect some people from the realities of local real-estate markets. Maybe low-income apartment renters. Maybe proprietors of small neighborhood bookstores. That's fine; if we all decide (through our elected officials) that these people deserve subsidies, then let us all (through those same elected officials) tax ourselves and give them those subsidies.

What's really pathetic, though, is for us to say that some people deserve those subsidies, but we are going to require someone else to come up with the money -- the landlord! Wow! We can really feel good about that -- protection for those poor victims and it doesn't cost us a penny! But of course we first have to dehumanize the landlords -- let's start be never using the word "landlord" without the prefix "greedy;" that will get us the sympathy we need.

Herb (not a landlord)
Park Slope

Posted by: guest at November 6, 2007 8:12 AM

1:06 AM can you please cite a single neighborhood, town, city which has "cheap" rents that has a vibrant street life and interesting stores.

It is so silly that people blame gentrification for retail biz failures - Show me a merchant who isnt happy when his customer base's income goes up exponentially, when development brings in thousands more customers (also at high incomes) and lower crime makes street life more vibrant and enjoyable and Ill show you a moron.

Sure rents increase but that will be more then off-set by the better retail climate that comes along with them - IF you adapt your inventory, merchandising and marketing to match.

Posted by: guest at November 6, 2007 9:07 AM

Take a walk down Seventh Avenue and play "Count the Empty Storefronts." Five years from now, I bet you can play the same game on Fifth.

Posted by: guest at November 6, 2007 9:57 AM

People just have to do some market research and see what people in the neighborhood really want in a store. i don't think residents of Park Slope with their high yearly incomes want to buy used books. Store owners need to keep up to date.

Posted by: guest at November 6, 2007 1:44 PM

Wow - I had no idea that everybody hated independent bookstores so much.

I work at a bookstore at the north end of the Slope -- it's called Unnameable Books, and it's located at 456 Bergen (between 5th Ave. and Flatbush) -- we have an excellent selection of new and used books, and we are still in business.

Like B&N or amazon, as someone pointed out, we can order any book in print for you, and ship it anywhere you like. Unlike B&N or amazon, we offer an outstanding browsing experience where you will probably find many books you had never heard of, and didn't know you wanted -- and you won't have to wade through piles of crappy bestsellers to get to the good stuff.

If you want to buy coffee, there are plenty of places nearby that serve excellent coffee. You can get it in a paper cup, and drink it while you browse in the bookstore.

Posted by: guest at November 7, 2007 6:12 PM

The commenters who complain that a used bookstore, which depends for its stock on the people who seek to sell their books, didn't have NY TIMES bestsellers on hand immediately don't understand the used-book business.

Used bookstores have older books, more unusual books, books that don't turn up on the shelves of a typical B&N superstore. Used bookstores are run by people who know their books, who can help customers find books, and who are willing to give customers leads on how to find what they're looking for even if the books are not on the store's shelves at that moment.

Heights Books is surviving because it does have a combination of in-store sales and online business. Park Slope Books tried the same combination, but often its street traffic just wasn't big enough to keep things going.

For a while, it appeared that Park Slope Books and Seventh Avenue Books would form the core of a "booksellers' row" in Park Slope -- but Seventh Avenue Books had problems of its own, and when it closed, that closing helped to undermine the hopes of Park Slope Books.

Now the bastion of independent bookselling is Community Books of Park Slope, and more power to them.

For those commenters here who can't seem to understand why we need independent bookstores, perhaps you should expand the spectrum of the stuff you read beyond the reading equivalent of the "top 40." Then try to find that kind of stuff at a B&N or even a Borders. Once you've been all over the city trying to find a book and have given up on all the chain bookstores, then you may realize just how valuable an independent bookstore can be.

Posted by: guest at November 8, 2007 1:06 PM

Interesting posts, though often based on incorrect assumptions. I'm the guy who opened and eventually closed 7th Ave. Books. Our stock was constantly changing, well chosen, and we had many loyal and happy customers. Despite high rent and other unavoidable expenses, we made a rather decent profit. So why did I close my store? Basically, I grew weary of the shoplifters, and the small but infuriating number of parents who let their children trash the kid's section, leaving books both scattered and torn. I'm pleased with what we accomplished. It was by most measures a fine used book store, but after six years I simply decided:"Enough's enough. Time to go."

Perhaps after some time off spent with family and friends, I'll get back to the biz. I kinda miss it...

Posted by: guest at November 20, 2007 6:58 PM