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John King, owner of John K. King Used & Rare Books (the Lafayette Boulevard store is shown below), says bricks-and-mortar bookstores are endangered.New chapter for bookstores
Used book sales soar online, as traditional shops struggle to compete
"King's is the best bookstore in the Midwest," says Richard Sydor of Cleaveland, who was in Detroit on business and stopped in for a couple of books.
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Thanks to the Internet, used books have become today's powerhouse, driven by price and the convenience of finding just about any title without leaving home. However, used books have become a threat to be reckoned with for booksellers across the country.
"We are becoming an endangered species," says John K. King, Metro Detroit's leading dealer in used and rare books and owner of John K. King Used & Rare Books. He was reacting to a study just released by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), a national nonprofit research organization.
Figures from 2004 say used book sales topped $2.2 billion, an 11 percent increase. But most of the growth can be credited to the Web, where sales jumped 33 percent online to just more than $600 million. By comparison, sales at traditional stores rose only 4.6 percent.
"I think consumers are increasingly starting to notice that they can get used books in good condition in a timely manner," says Jeff Hayes, a director at InfoTrends, a market research firm that served as the principal analyst for the BISG study.
However, not all booksellers agree.
King says that one "advantage of shopping in a store is that you can see what condition books are in. Used books sold on the Internet are often not in good condition. Powell's, the big online dealer in Oregon, never gives condition reports."
And Patricia Jonas of Royal Oak Books on Woodward Avenue says the prices for used books online are not necessarily what they seem. "You can buy a book for $1 on the Internet but it costs $5 or more to ship. The total price would be $6 for the customer, who could find the same book in my store for $3," she says.
King, who has his main store in Detroit and a smaller one in Ferndale, offers the specific example of a Disney "Snow White" book that was published for $30 and shortly after went down to 47 cents on the Internet.
"Sounds like a bargain for the ages," King says. "People thought we were trying to cheat them when we priced the book at $15, the legitimate price for a new used book. But they didn't count on $15 for mailing."
More than 111 million used books were purchased last year, representing about one out of every 12 overall book purchases. By the end of the decade, the percentage is expected to rise to one out of 11, a troubling trend when sales for new works are essentially flat; authors and publishers receive no royalties from used buys.
"Obviously, these are not statistics to warm the heart of publishers," says Adam Rothberg, a Simon & Schuster spokesman.
The BISG reports that price is the greatest appeal for choosing used books over new ones. While hardcovers often cost $25 and higher, used books purchased in 2004 averaged $8.12 -- except for textbooks, which averaged $42.31.
The study will likely revive the complaints of authors and publishers who say that online retailers are hurting new sales by aggressively promoting used copies. On Amazon.com and eBay, for example, used editions are often available at the same time, or even before, a new book is released.
While buying online might be convenient for customers, it is helping to drive retail used and new bookstores out of business. King, who has been in the book business for 40 years, mentions some of the recent closings in Metro Detroit. They include: Books Abound in Farmington, Paperbacks Unlimited in Ferndale, the Little Professor in Dearborn and Bookman's Corner in Plymouth.
"One reason we survived is that we offer a service the Internet can't match," King says. "People can come in and find books they didn't know existed. They can't do that online. Besides, there's no sense of discovery, of exploration that you can find in a store."
On a recent morning, loyal customers of King Books were exploring and discovering.
Richard Sydor of Cleveland was in Detroit on business and stopped in for a couple books because "King's is the best bookstore in the Midwest."
Keith Barnett, who teaches Spanish and math at Wayne County Community College, says he shops at John K. King Used & Rare Books in Detroit because he likes history books that are out of print.
"There's more variety here than at Borders or Barnes & Noble. Just browsing is therapeutic for me."
King notes that people come in for one book and go away with several.
Detroiter Andy Porter bought a bag of science fiction and horror books. "I've been coming here for 10 years because they always have what I want," he says.
While retail sales of used books have gone down, King lists 20,000 rare books on the Internet. "Rare books make up for the downward spiral in the stores," he says.
David Aronovitz, who owns the Fine Books Company in Rochester, specializes in rare and collectible books online. "My business is steady," he says. "It increases every year."
Book Beat in Oak Park is known for new art and children's books. But proprietor Cary Loren says 15 to 20 percent of his business is done online. "I'm selling a lot of used and rare books online to clients overseas."
The size of the used book market has never been calculated before, and the industry study group report represents an unusual cooperative effort among the leading used book retailers.
"There's a great deal of curiosity about this market. We all know our own numbers, but we could only guess about our competitors," says Boris Wertz, COO of Abebooks .com, an online retailer that, according to Wertz, had used sales of more than $100 million last year.
Sales from individual retailers were not provided by the BISG.
The BISG study raises other questions, such as how publishers can respond to the used market. Jane Friedman, CEO of Harper Collins, rejects the idea of lowering prices, but acknowledges that she has no specific solution. "It's something we've looked at for a long time," she says.
The study also does not resolve a fundamental dispute over used books: Are they hurting the market for new books, as many publishers and authors believe?
Or, as retailers say, do they simply enable customers to acquire books they otherwise wouldn't have purchased?
"My sense is, excluding textbooks, that at least half of used books sales come at the expense of books still in print," Hayes says.
"But there may be an upside, because a consumer might buy a used book by a certain author, and like it enough to buy the author's next book. So at this point, the impact is hard to quantify."
The Associated Press contributed to this report. You can reach Joy Hakanson Colby at (313) 222-2276 or jcolby@detnews.com.
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The Detroit News.
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