Powell’s turns the page

From the LAT:

…The company started selling books online in 1994 — before Amazon — and ships millions of dollars of books, about 90% of them outside the Pacific Northwest, each year. (The company, privately held, does not release its financial data.)

"The key was identifying what the Web was going to mean and putting a lot of resources into it," said Jim Milliot, business and news director at Publishers Weekly. "Recognizing that a neighborhood bookstore, to survive in the long term, needs to do more than sell books to people who walk in the front door."

But the Internet has gone from being a clear winner for Powell’s to a source of apprehension. Powell described his business as being "flat," and said he hoped there was a way to "reenergize" it but couldn’t imagine how. He’s getting it from both sides: Amazon has posted enormous gains this year, just as consumers have begun selling used books directly on the Web.

"The Internet has allowed anybody to become a used-book seller," said John Mutter of the blog Shelf Awareness (shelf-awareness.com). "Go on EBay and set up an account. The sheer availability does press the prices down."

…"It’s probably as tense as it’s ever been," Publishers Weekly’s Milliot said of the business climate. "The whole industry, from the publishers down to the bookstores, is uncertain where things are going to go. No one worries that the physical book is going to disappear. But they’re all fighting for a smaller slice of the pie."

…Portland, with its comparatively low rents and rich pedestrian culture, has been a hospitable home to bookstores. (Indeed, in what may be a bittersweet footnote for many Los Angeles book buyers, the entire stocks of some of L.A.’s closed used bookstores — Other Times on Pico Boulevard and Arnold Herr Bookseller on Fairfax Avenue — have been shipped to Powell’s over the last two years.)