Beleaguered bookshops fight back

BRICKS and mortar bookshops are fighting back, reminding people they are more than just a place to buy books.

books

BELEAGUERED bricks and mortar bookshops are fighting back, reminding people they are more than just a place to buy books.

On Saturday the industry, reeling from the collapse of bookshops, is staging a National Bookshop Day.

The Australian Booksellers Association, which represents many independent booksellers, is behind the day to celebrate Australian literature, culture and society.

ABA chief executive officer Joel Becker said the industry had been talking about staging the day, based on a global independent music shop day of celebration, for some time.

"We just thought this would be a really good thing for us to do in Australia with books," he said.

There is interest from North America to replicate the day.

Mr Becker said Australia had a large number of independent bookshops operated by small business owners. Collins and Dymocks badged bookshops also are independently operated. Mr Becker said there had been a lot of doom and gloom around the REDgroup closure of Angus & Robertson and Borders stores.

But he said the failure of the chain was more to do with its private equity model than the demise of bookshops.

Mr Becker said online book selling also was cited as a reason for the demise of the REDgroup but the reality was that the group was doing a lot of online trading.

"One of the reasons that many of those shops failed was they were in high rent retail outlets," he said.

He said many of the independents were in shopping strips, paying less rent. He said the smaller outlets could offer better service.

"We are trying to get across that these bookshops are part of the community," he said.

Mr Becker said as much as going online might be attractive, it was not the same as walking into a bookshop and selecting books as they caught your interest.

He said people knew that when they were shopping at their local bookshop they were contributing to the local economy.