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The

Thickens

PHOTOS BY GLENN TRIEST

Independent bookstores face
stiff competition.

Cary Loren's Book Beat bookstore in Oak Park is a busy place.

SUSAN KNOPPOW
SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

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58

ary Loren peers
out from be-
hind the clut-
front
tered
counter at Book
Beat, his 12-
year-old book-
store in Oak
Park. Paperbacks and hardcov-
ers are everywhere — on coun-
ters, in cases, on tables.
Shoppers have to watch their
step to avoid tripping over the
piles of art and poetry collec-
tions, novels, children's stories
and cookbooks.
The popular store sells a lot of
books. Mr. Loren doesn't keep
computerized records, so he is
not exactly sure how many.
Despite its popularity, Book
Beat has not exactly been a gold

mine for Mr. Loren and Colleen
Kammer, his wife and business
partner.
"This is not a very lucrative
field," says Mr. Loren, 38. But
he is quick to point out that it
isn't money that keeps him go-
ing.
"A bookstore has always been
a community center," he ex-
plains.
Rissa Winkelman, another of
the many Jewish booksellers in
the area, and co-owner of
Bookpeople in West Bloomfield,
agrees. "A lot of these people
have become our friends," she
says of longtime customers,
some of whom have been shop-
ping at Bookpeople since the
store opened 20 years ago.
Until recently, independent
booksellers like Mr. Loren and
Ms. Winkelman sold most of the
books in their respective com-
munities. With the local and na-
tional expansion of chain stores
like Barnes & Noble and Bor-
ders, both of which have estab-
lished a major presence in the
Detroit area, that is no longer
the case.
The chain super-
Lil and
stores, complete
Bernard
Kramer own with cappuccino
bars and extended
Marwil
Bookstore
hours, are giving the
near Wayne little guys a run for
State
their money.

University.

That is, what little money
there is. Profit margins in the
book business are minuscule;
mark-ups hover in the 40 per-
cent range and retail prices are
set by publishers.
Chuck Robinson, president of
the 4,500-member American
Booksellers Association, a na-
tional trade organization, says
publishers also offer volume dis-
counts.
A chain like Barnes & Noble
can take advantage of the dis-
count by ordering 10,000 copies
of a popular title, he says, which
it will then distribute to ap-
proximately 200 stores nation-
wide. Bookpeople, on the other
hand, might order only 20 copies
of the same book.
The cost savings allows
Barnes & Noble to discount
some titles, a practice the inde-
pendents often cannot afford.
In addition, although chains
may not make much more prof-
it on individual books than their
independent counterparts, they
are supported by large corpora-
tions with extensive resources.
Barnes & Noble is a publicly
held company based in New
York. Borders was acquired by
Kmart in 1992.
Molly Sapp, general manager
of the Birmingham Borders
Bookshop, one of the chain's orig-
inal stores, says the parent coin-

parry hardly affects her daily op-
erations. "There's always that
apprehension about growing too
fast and losing your identity,"
she says, but over the past year-
and-a-half she has found that
Kmart exerts "very little influ-
ence on day-to-day business."
Just as it did for its other com-
panies, including Builders
Square and Sports Authority,
Kmart "provided low, interest-
free cash" to support Borders' ex-
pansion, she says.
The parent companies may
take a hands-off approach to the
daily operations of their stores,
but those stores have affected in-
dependents around the United
States and throughout metro
Detroit in many ways.
Bookpeople, for instance, nev-
er stayed open past 5 or 6 p.m.
on weekends, and it didn't ex-
actly encourage customers to eat
in the store. Today, a big red
sign taped to the door reads
"Bookpeople is now open till
10:00 p.m. on Saturdays." Ms.
Winkelman and her partner,
Sandra Nathanson, serve free
coffee and cookies near the cash
register.
Barnes & Noble, just four
miles away, closes at 11 a.m.
Every night. It has a full cafe at
its new store in Bloomfield Hills,
with tables near the window and

PLOT page 60