Independent Booksellers Stand Strong as Industry Changes
Borders and Joseph-Beth Books left the market, e-books dominate and bookstores adjust
Independent booksellers like Suzanne DeGaetano didn’t exactly do a jig when larger competitors left the market twice in the past year and a half. DeGaetano’s Cleveland Heights-based Mac’s Backs-Books on Coventry gained customers following the closures of Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lyndhurst and Borders locations in Northeast Ohio, but the avid reader and business supporter in her couldn’t allow the co-owner to rejoice. “It’s really kind of a tragedy when a big room of books is no longer there,” she said. “We know people in the publishing industry, and it’s bad for them because a lot of people got their jobs cut. A lot of books aren’t being sold now.” Borders, once the country’s second-largest bookseller, closed last summer. (In the North …
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