To Survive, Bookstores Begin Charging Admission for Readings

Sometimes it feels like we're just watching The Little Shop on the Corner over and over. The New York Times reports that independent bookstores across the U.S. are starting to charge admission for events, particularly for readings. It's nothing too new, if you're used to attending readings at non-profits, for instance, but the idea that it might just be the only way for a bookstore to stay profitable in this day and age seems a crying shame. Ah, but consider the e-book phenomenon: The Guardian has an interesting post on their popularity, with the author saying, "In New York last week for the publication of my latest novel, I heard print books referred to as p-books: as if they were ebooks' clunky physical byproducts." P-books?! No way. The Boulder Bookstore, the Harvard Book Store and McNally Jackson in New York are all on board to charge:

“There’s no one right now who’s not considering it,” said Sarah McNally, the owner of McNally Jackson Books in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. “The entire independent bookstore model is based on selling books, but that model is changing because so many book sales are going online.”

The Boulder Book Store in Colorado caused a stir in April when it announced it would charge $5 a person to attend store events. In April, Kepler’s Books, an independent in Menlo Park, Calif., began charging customers a $10 gift card, which admits two people to each author appearance. (They also have the option of buying the book in exchange for admission.)

Ms. McNally is overseeing the construction of an event space in the lower level of her store, a warmly lighted shop on Prince Street. As soon as the space is ready, she said, the store will start charging admission to its events.

Bookstore owners say they are doing so because too many people regularly come to events having already bought a book online or planning to do so later. Consumers now see the bookstore merely as another library — a place to browse, do informal research and pick up staff recommendations.

“They type titles into their iPhones and go home,” said Nancy Salmon, the floor manager at Kepler’s. “We know what they’re doing, and it has tested my patience.”

So even if customers are buying the real thing, they're doing so online:

Heather Gain, the marketing manager of the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass., said that in recent years the store had begun doing more events that required the customer to buy a book, constantly reminding them that “if they aren’t purchasing the books from the establishments that are running these events, the bookstores are going to go away.”

Other shops are testing the waters, either charging occasionally or at least considering the idea:

“We are retailers, we are selling a product, for sure, but, at the same time, we’re a cultural center,” said Neal Sofman, co-owner of Bookshop West Portal in San Francisco, but he would not rule out charging in the future. “You can never say never anymore.”

Others make an occasional exception to their no-charging policy. BookCourt, a bookstore in Brooklyn that holds about 300 author events each year, charged $10 a person for an event celebrating the magazine N+1 in December, at the urging of Keith Gessen, an author and an editor of N+1. More than 200 people showed up.

But we wonder if the draw for poetry readings might make a difference? Certainly it's a different ballgame in the fiction world. Read the entire article here.