When the number of indies began dropping precipitously, the ABA, headed by executive director Bernie Rath, turned to litigation. “It’s us and Barnes & Noble against Amazon.” “I don’t want Barnes & Noble to go away any longer,” she says. Today indie booksellers like Gayle Shanks, co-owner and cofounder of Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe and Phoenix, Ariz., once ringed by chains, has come to regard Barnes & Noble as an ally. So much so that the Association of American Publishers reported that 50% of trade sales moved online in 2020 for the first time. Last year the ABA reported 1,701 stores with nearly 2,100 locations.īut as indies come back, Amazon continues to grow its online business. After ebbing to a low of 1,401 stores with 1,651 locations in 2009, based on membership data from the American Booksellers Association-down from 5,500 bookstores with 7,000 locations in 1995-indies have slowly rebounded with new stores and established stores changing hands. Over the next two decades, indies saw their market share further erode due to Amazon and the Great Recession (2007–2009). Combined sales from discount stores, food stores and drugstores, mail order, used-book stores, and warehouse clubs made up the remaining 29%, according to a Consumer Research Study.
For Amazon, that translated into $15.75 million, up from $511,000 during its first year of operation. The “other” channel, including Amazon (which opened its online bookstore in 1995), had 10%. In 1996, chain stores, selling physical books in physical spaces, dominated adult book sales, with 25% of the market independents and book clubs commanded 18% each. Like the book industry as a whole over the past 25 years, bookselling has undergone seismic changes.
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