Duthie Books closure is more writing on the wall for independent bookstores

With local institution Duthie Books heading into a liquidation sale that starts next Thursday (January 28), owner Cathy Duthie Legate and assistant manager Michael Varty sat down with the Straight to take the long view of book retail in the 21st century, as the on-line world bowls over the stodgy old three-dimensional one.

The store on West 4th Avenue—the last piece of what was once a local chain—will close its doors for good in late February, ending more than half a century of business. It’s a fate that looms for many revered independent bookstores across the country. What will readers miss when they’re gone?

“Maybe you go on-line and you want a specific title and maybe I’m out of it, and so you look around,” Duthie Legate says, seated at the order desk at the rear of the store. “It’s the books you find when you’re here, and you go, ”˜Oh, that looks so great’ and get it—the four or five books that you find not because you’re looking for them, but because you walk through and you see them”¦.You know, I talk to everybody that comes in. I know my customers. I might not remember their names all the time, but I know that they’ve got kids or they’ve just been to Italy or read this book—I know them. And that’s going to get lost.”

The closure is the result of what seems like a perfect financial storm, with rising rents and operational costs meeting a downturn in the economy at large. The biggest factor, however, is the way the entire business model of the books trade is being transformed by the digital forces that have capsized the music industry, with on-line sales and electronic formats slashing traditional forms of retail.

“We’re going to go through the same thing, and I don’t know if it’s going to be as serious,” Duthie Legate says. “Some people think it’s going to help the industry because you don’t have to pay to transport all these heavy things, and their footprint will get smaller. But I’m still scared.”¦I’m still not overly impressed with the Kindle. I’m waiting to see what the tablet is like. It’s not my life. I’m a book person—you can’t change me.”

Varty agrees. A veteran of 16 years with the company, he also sees books—in their old, physical form—as categorically different from any of their electronic competitors. “The experience of reading is a slow process,” he says. “So I believe that, unless everybody can slow down and have the pace where you have to think about ideas, digest them—I think that’s the issue. I’ve read things that have said, you know, people are visually smarter now than they ever have been, and all that kind of stuff. However, I think we ought to be able to slow down and process things, whether it’s a philosphical idea, an entertainment, or what have you. I think that that’s the great thing about the book. You can put the book down after you’ve read a couple of pages, think about it, go have a nap, and then come back to it. And I just don’t see the electronic equivalent of that, even in the Kindle, because it’s about the gadget, I think. That’s my feeling. But I’m old-school—I think Gutenberg had it right. I mean, the Kindle is taking off and people are buying it and everything, but it’s like the iPhone—it’s marketed, it’s sleek, it looks good. I have no interest in it, though.”

Neither Duthie Legate nor Varty thinks independent bookstores will vanish entirely. Still, they warn, surviving as a bookseller will require careful financial planning and a taste for obscurity.

“God, if I had a bookstore now, I would own my location,” Duthie Legate says. “Because then, say if you wanted to save this bookstore and were willing to go into debt again—which I’m not, I’ve done it a couple of times—you could borrow from your store and not lose your home.”

“I think bookstores are going to become a niche thing,” Varty adds, “like vinyl records are a niche item now, and there will be only maybe one or two, depending on the size of the city, but the people that know where it is will go there and be really passionate about it. So I don’t think it’s going to go the way of the dodo, but it will be further and further on the fringe.”