Anonymous Patron writes “Rutland Herald reports on another indy store closing, this time in Rutland,VT. The outdoor book bins that were a visible calling card for the business at 28 South Main St. are now empty. So, too, is the large red building with its inventory of 40,000 books.
A Rutland institution for 174 years, Tuttle Antiquarian Books closed its doors last month; a victim of technology.
“The reason for closing was the effects of the Internet,” Jon Mayo said Wednesday while watching workers load books onto a truck bound for Maine. “We think that’s what did us in.””
What didn’t they adapt?
I used to live in West Chester, PA and a couple of miles down the road was a great independent used book store, Baldwin’s Book Barn. It was an old stone barn that has zillions of used books. I just looked on the internet to see if they still exist and sure enough, they are still around. They claim to have a healthy presence selling on the Amazon, Half.com, etc…
From the VT newspaper article, it seems that the owner of the bookstore to be closed decided not to enter the online market. It is too bad, but a good business is one that can adapt to change.
Re:What didn’t they adapt?
I sold ~75 of my used books on Amazon’s Marketplace while in library school. It was a fair amount of work to package each book, take it to the post office, and email the buyer. If I didn’t net at least $1.50 per order, that was less than minimum wage for my time. It was ok in the beginning, but at the end (2 years ago) there were so many sellers competing against each other that it was no longer economically attractive for me. I’m not at all surprised that some used book dealers don’t want to deal with Internet marketing if they can’t get a decent markup on their books.