We’re truly sad to announce that 21st Century Bookstore, an institution in Fairfield since 1984, is closing its doors! It’s doubly sad for us at the Source since 21st Century opened in October 1983, six months before our very first issue!
But for independent bookstores, the writing has been on the wall for some time. Back in 2004, owner Tony Kainauskus and his wife Sharon decided to close and look for jobs out of town. Along came angel investors Len and Dena Oppenheim, who purchased the store, opened in a new location, and allowed Tony and Sharon to continue as managers. Since then, the faltering economy combined with the rise of Amazon and ebooks have made independent bookstores an untenable business, especially in a small town like Fairfield.
21st Century Bookstore founder Tony Kainauskus, his wife Sharon, and owners Len and Dena Oppenheim. They will be open at least through the end of March.
Here’s what Len says: “Thanks to the support of so many of you, both Fairfield residents and our friends and customers all over the country, we have managed to do okay since we re-launched the new store. . . . Unfortunately, during the last two years, given the weakening economy, the increased popularity of electronic media like The Kindle, and of course due to the ever-increasing competition from Amazon, our losses have grown to the point that we finally have to face up to the reality that we cannot continue this endeavor into perpetuity.
“Tony has expressed our predicament perfectly, comparing us to a blacksmith or buggy repair man at the beginning of the 20th century. There is practically no way an independent bookstore can thrive or even survive in our modern society. We are in excellent company, as we close our store, in that we are exiting at about the same time as one of the great spiritual bookstores in America, The Bodhi Tree (located in Los Angeles), is closing its doors.
“I really want to thank Sharon and Tony for having created one of the greatest bookstores on the planet, and for having nursed and nurtured it during its great growth phase and then having carefully taken it into its final retirement.”
From Tony: “To the many customers who ordered through us, when prices at online dealers were often less, thank you, you have helped our business survive as long as it did.
“ And lastly I need to be grateful for the closing of the store as well, as this is another hidden gift. For letting go of someone or something can be our hardest yet greatest spiritual lesson.”
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=1d72c5de-8271-42d2-bfd4-9b3bf4d27333)
The end of an era! I love 21st Century Bookstore and will miss it dearly. I am grateful to the Oppenheims for investing in the store at a time so many independent bookstores were closing – a treasured gift to Fairfield to have the store around these last years – thank you! Best wishes to Tony and Sharon in whatever they engage in the future. Very sad about this…..
When I heard this news I identified myself as part of the reasons independent bookstores are closing. I am an Amazon Prime member, get all my books from them, and am in huge support of eBooks. I have not been in a bookstore in a long time, but I can recall spending many many hours in my neighborhood bookstore in Seattle (Bulldogs News and Elliot Bay Books).
We're seeing tremendous disruption centuries old business models, and even the models that have replaced them this decade (online books shipped), are now being replaced themselves (online books downloaded). Change is both exciting and melancholy.
Tony's closing statement above is very positive. I wish them the best of luck!
What you're talking about is a "bookstore" where you go in with your eReader, have coffee, and download books. But to get you there they would need some value add, like free books of the week, which you can download AT the store. But then you're facing DRM issues.
And all for what? To increase overhead when you can do everything online?
Almost but not quite. Let's use Barnes and Noble as our example. They already have tons of stores. So what if we just change the model? What if in addition to coffee that they already have, they still have books, just not that many of them. People still love the tactile book and I believe they will for a while – how long is anybody's guess – but shit, even vinyl records are making a comeback!
I'm not disagreeing that books are going "e" in a big way, I just see a world where you can create a whole new book research, browsing, reading, and purchase experience by combining online with the infrastructure that already exists. It's much more about the experience in the retail store in this model than in stocking and selling lots of books.II think it's going to be years, perhaps two more generations until people stop going to retail stores and just shop digitally. I actually shop online more than my kids, who are actually online more than me. So maybe, just maybe their kids will be the ones who stop shopping at retail.
Until then, IMHO, it would be a shame and a lost opportunity for, say, Barnes and Noble to just fold up their bookstores and go home.
"And will be as rare as vinyl records in the not to distant future." Then I will be the biblio-equivalent of the weirdo geek obsessing over his record collection in the basement. I LOVE all my books. There's nothing like the feel and smell of a new book. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way, but I am not sure it isn't a generational appreciation…..
What will happen to 21st Century's esoteric book catalogue?? For decades it's been one the the best in the Midwest, if not the country.
I agree that there is opportunity, and like vinyl, paper books will have their niche, but I do not see how that supports the enormous overhead of the Barnes and Noble stores. Those stores are huge! I predict 50-100% of all Barnes and Noble stores will close this decade.
Oh yeah, many of those stores will close, but I believe they and so many have over-expanded anyhow. It'll be shut down many, re-tool the others.
Wow… it's as old as I am.
21st Century was the definitive place to get books growing up. Every time I drive by their old location down by My Lucky Day I remember the smell and feeling of walking into the place, and how my dad and I used to browse the fairly outright Hindu selection back behind the main rooms.
This is upsetting news, not just because it's one of the only places to buy my book in town, but sends a shiver of worry down my spine. If bookstores now, what else in the near future?
It's odd how our economy only supports businesses that provide *more* than they traditionally did. Restaurants typically only survive with a liquor license, bookstores only survive with a restaurant or coffee shop inside them. Hell, you can get your McDonald's inside of some Wal-Marts.
Is the future of our small town economy nothing but combo coffee/book/restaurant/music venues and Super Wal-Mart?
(I take some solace in the fact that no one seems to care that KFC/Taco Bell closed recently, too)
Indeed! And now you're talking with sustainability! Harder to do in Cities although still possible, what you suggest may well be the revival of small town America.
So where will we go to dream? I had my best moments of discovery, of hearing new voices, of comparing one version to another, of flirting, of getting inspired to read and write, of serendipity…in bookstores. Especially the small ones. My favorite dates were bookstore hoppings in Harvard Square. In my college days you could get to five independent bookstores, each with a different stockpile, in less than 1 mile. I know something new will appear, but still I cried when I read the article about 21st century closing last week. It is not just the books, but the people you run into who you know or don't know but with whom you sense you have something in common.
Well it seems like everyone is spending that time on Facebook. Which is a bit depressing.
I was hoping when they expanded their gift department that it could boost the book sales. I guess that's where the economy struck so directly on top of the amazon-rape.
Hard lesson reiterated once again – you must support local businesses that you want to see survive/flourish. We always ordered our books via 21st Century, but I think we were in a minority. Tony could order anything for us and did.
Yet, as much as I agree, all that is old is new again. So at some point, I believe bookstores will come back into Vogue as folks like Barnes and Noble figure out how to truly create clicks and mortar operations. For let's face, it, there is NOTHING like a good bookstore. Like Tattered Cover in Denver….
I just blogged about this on my company site in fact, suggesting how GM could create a clicks and mortar business that takes what we know that consumers like, traditional retail, and the web and create engaging customer experiences that, well, sell.
I think that browsing real books is one value-added service, A personal approach to reviews, comments, recommendations is another, and immediacy of being able to purchase and carry the same day. I often browse B&N, then order on amazon.com or from 21st century. What about libraries? will we browse at public llibraries and then check out or buy or order e-books after seeing them in libraries? could all book lovers like Tony & Len find equal enjoyment running a library funded publicly?
When will we all be able to check out e-books from an e-library on our e-reader without going to a real library?
Revelations makes its money on food, and the books are decor and ambience.
21st Century tried to support the books with gifts, and failed. had it downsized the books even more and became a florist, giftshop, or bakery, etc – it could have continued to have a 'featured books' and 'spirituality' sections.
Of the value-added aspects – personal recommendations can continue if Tony & Len continue their newsletter, but browsing and picking up require real stores. As stated above, however, Amazon does it cheaper. Larger communities support a certain amount of bookstores – colleges always have one for students' needs (they order almost exactly how many are required for classes and profit from gifts)
Wishing it weren't so. I love talking and handling books before I buy.
I'm just going to miss shopping there. Plain and simple.
It is ironic that it is sometimes less expensive to travel to a European library and read an Egyptian papyrus than it is to access electronic media produced in the 1980s. Software and hardware are replaced making it difficult to reproduce. In another 20 years likely impossible. With each technical advancement in communication the ability to recover after a crash becomes more difficult. Books can be read anywhere there is light —- electronic media depend on an incredibly complex system, the least of which is electricty.
An appropriately true comment from from an esteemed Old Librarian
I am sorry to hear this. It's sad for Fairfield!
Thanks for sticking it out for as long as you have.
there is far more to the richness of life than efficiencies of competing business models. to me, this announcement is indeed sad news. i grew up going to, practically living at, the very first Border's bookstore, a modest whole in the wall in ann arbor, michigan. by whole, i mean they had everything. they were an extension of the home libraries my grandpa and father built, maintained and loved.
i love bookstores.
ebooks and amazon have no character whatsoever. it may well be that the media is the message and that message is entrenched in the future shock of rampant change arriving today, but the message is also within the purveyors of the media and we have just lost a great gestalt of folk wisdom, indeed "focal" wisdom, that sprang from within the elemental group consciousness of our community bookstore. that is the real message here and this loss is, to me, inestimable.
wondrous thanks to all who labored in love at 21st Century Bookstore.
That's true to some extent, but I also feel like there is a revival in artisan business over the past couple decades. Micro brews, hobby and small farms, farmer's markets, coffee shops, bakeries, euro games . . .
And as much as online industry has taken out the rug out from under a lot of mom and pop shops, that industry has also enabled as many small software/technology businesses.
My biggest interest in the sustainability movement is to see community cores, rebuilt with community business and markets. Local foods, crafts and services.
"Is the future of our small town economy nothing but combo coffee/book/restaurant/music venues and Super Wal-Mart?"
I see a description of two fundamental businesses. One benefits from tight control over an efficient supply line. The other benefits from the loose network of socialization and community.
One of those things is commodity. Basic economic principals suggest to me that a substantially efficient supply line that can be controlled with a fine enough grain will even put Wal Mart out of business. I think we'll even have the technology for it within our lifetimes.
But I don't see communities going out of style quite as quickly.
"When will we all be able to check out e-books from an e-library on our e-reader without going to a real library? "
That day is here!
New York Public Library
or
Google Books
Sam wrote: "Revelations makes its money on food, and the books are decor and ambiance."
None of us really knows, but I believe Revelations' profit margin on books is far higher than on the food. Maybe not total revenue, but profit-per-piece. Notably, Revelations deals primarily in Used books where 21st Century deals in New.
Our economy follows our community. When we figure out what kind of community we want to live in, we'll structure our economy to follow. In the case of 21st Century Bookstore, we — collectively — decided we didn't want a bookstore without coffee/restaurant/music venues too.
What do we want our village to be?
Good point!
And yet I continue to buy things from Amazon. On one hand my family fully supports local food products as much as we can, on the other hand I have no issues buying books from Amazon and never considered ordering through 21st Century. Something for me to digest.
I went to the Tattered Cover! I happened to hear about it from you, then I happened to see it while I was picking Terry up at the train. Well, I heard about it on facebook…
This reminds me of the premise of the late great Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series.