When Borders and Barnes & Noble began taking over the U.S. book market in the 1990s, book lovers were worried that the end was near for their beloved neighborhood bookstores.
Borders itself didn’t last, closing its stores in 2011. But Barnes & Noble has become an anchor that keeps publishers invested in physical stores.
The same was said about eBooks when they began disrupting the publishing industry in the early 2010s. Yet data from 2023 showed that eBooks accounted for 34% of book sales in 2023 with paper books accounting for 66%, and print book revenue more than quadrupled eBook revenue in the same year.
Despite hitting a bump during the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of bookstores in the U.S. increased to roughly 2,600 last year. That’s a nearly 160% increase from 2009, when there were 1,651 stores.
And while digital book sales are growing more rapidly across the globe and are expected to account for a higher percentage of book sales in years to come, brick-and-mortar bookstores aren’t going anywhere — at least for the time being.
That’s great news for Sacramentans, who for years have been able to peruse and shop at several independent bookstores each with their own unique identities that cater to the city’s diverse communities.
Beers Books Sunday, Sept. 8, 2024, located at 712 R St. in Sacramento.Gerardo Zavala/CapRadio
Beers Books
At Beers Books, one of Northern California’s oldest bookstores, owner Andrew Naify explained that his family has continued to uphold the values previous owners instilled into the bookstore while also branching into several unique niches that give the bookstore an identity. These niches include philosophy, metaphysical spirituality and a mix of unique selections not easily found — if at all — on online bookstores like Amazon.
When speaking about the store's spirituality section, he said the section includes “Eastern and Western religions, but also includes things more related to the esoteric and occult.”
Naify added that the store has a robust philosophy section because his father, Jim Naify, has been a philosophy professor at Sacramento City College for over 40 years.
“I’m sure we’ve got the biggest philosophy selection anywhere in the area,” he said.
Naify has managed the bookstore since 2014, but the Naify family has owned Beers since 1984, making them the longest-running owners of the store.
The Buddhism section at Beers Books. Owner Andrew Naify said the bookstore is known for, among other genres, its metaphysical spiritualism and religion section.Gerardo Zavala/CapRadio
Last year, the business relocated to 712 R Street from its previous location of nearly 20 years. The storefront on S Street was going to be demolished and replaced with an apartment complex.
However, Naify said the move has been marred by a string of three break-ins over the last 15 months that have cost the business thousands of dollars.
“The first break-in was at our old location when we were in the process of moving,” he explained. “They pried the door open and there was no property damage because they were about to demolish the building [but] they did abscond with maybe $2,000 worth of rare books that we had in storage.”
Fortunately, Naify said he was able to get 90% of the books back by tracking them down at local bookstores. After reimbursing them for the cost of purchasing the books, Naify said the business was able to reduce the loss to $1,000.
A second break-in occurred a few months after the business opened, when someone broke into a lock box that held a key to the business. Although they didn’t steal anything, the business spent $500 on rekeying every lock on the premises.
In the most recent mid-August break-in, cameras placed in and around the business saw someone break the business’s front door, walk around the store and leave without stealing anything.
“The lowest quote we’ve had for replacement of a commercial door has been $4,500,” Naify said. “It’s going to be a two-month lead time to get it shipped and installed, which is a huge inconvenience to have a boarded-up door.”
Tyler Glimstad has worked at Beers for three years and said the store offers a variety of books from niche genres and subgenres like vintage guides on jewelry making and vintage car repair guides, among other things.
“We’re literally one of the only bookstores in the area that will offer that,” he stressed. “If you lose that and you have a passion for fashion design, jewelry making or philosophy, where do you go to find those older, more obscure works on those topics? It’s important to have a Barnes & Noble, but also a healthy ecosystem … where we’re getting older books, more obscure topics and a more niche thing that still has great intellectual value.”
One thing Glimstad said is critical for the success of Beers and other local bookstores is to work with each other to ensure people have a reason to visit all local independent bookstores.
“For example, we’re very friendly with Crawford’s Books,” he explained. “They have a great romance section and contemporary fiction; we generally leave that to them.”
He said if someone came in to sell used books in those categories, they might direct them to Crawford’s on Freeport Blvd. instead.
“We’re happy to send customers back and forth, which is great,” he added.
Furthermore, Glimstad said the recent break-in made him and Beers staff think about the surrounding businesses, like Tupi Coffee located a few blocks away.
“You could make a fun day of going out for a coffee and browsing for a book,” Glimstad said. “Or if we don’t have the book you’re looking for, you could grab an album or go down R Street and check out many of the great vendors down here. Personally, when I travel, I’ll find a good bookstore and that’s kind of the epicenter of my trip.”
Kicksville Vinyl & Vintage partnership
Tim Matranga co-owns Kicksville Vinyl & Vintage with his wife Laura. The business recently moved into a unit attached to Beers Books because it was nearly three times larger than their previous space.
“People love records and books, and I think the combination together is great,” he said. “A lot of people say physical media — books and records — they’re on the way out, but we’ve sort of proven it wrong. Although it’s kind of a niche market, a lot of people are still into it and we’re able to make a go of it doing records.”
Kicksville Vinyl & Vintage Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024, in Sacramento. The store relocated to 712 R Street earlier this year and shares a building with Beers Books.Gerardo Zavala/CapRadio
Matranga noted that although they were not affected by the recent break-in, they did benefit from a wave of support from the community the following weekend.
Jerry Luizzi has been a regular customer and seller at Beers for the last 15 years. As a book collector, Luizzi said “Beers is one of the only bookstores around in Sacramento that I like.”
When speaking about the significance of Beers and Kicksville partnering together, Luizzi said the two businesses were helping each other stay afloat by offering the community a need he doesn’t see going away anytime soon.
“I think the material aspect of books and records are extremely important,” he argued. “I don’t think music on records is going away because there’s a resurgence of that, and I think people that sold off their collections like I did 20 years ago are now kicking themselves in the butt for doing such a thing.”
Twenty-eight-year-old Logan Hansen said he first visited the old Beers location on S Street while he was in the process of moving to Sacramento from San Francisco. Since then, he has tried to visit Beers and Time Tested Books at least once or twice a month.
He added that he loves Kicksville and was thrilled when he learned it was moving into the same building as Beers.
“I look for two things in a used bookstore,” he explained. “One is really good curation and staff recommendations, and one is breadth of selection. Beers has a little bit of both.”
Hansen said he’s purchased books on critical theory, philosophy and communism from Beers.
“I’m always looking if they have any cool stuff on communism,” he said. “Any sort of radical political alternative stuff, just as a personal interest.”
“I would like to see the community support used bookstores however they can,” Hansen added. “They clearly have lots of irons in the fire … and to have to sink money into something like a break-in, that’s a bummer.”
On a recent day in August, 24-year-old Lloyd Andrew McNemar was visiting Sacramento to see his mother. As she was looking for books at Beers, he was scouting Kicksville’s inventory for anything that caught his eye.
Lloyd Andrew McNemar, 24, looks at vinyl records Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024, at Kicksville Vinyl & Vintage.Gerardo Zavala/CapRadio
“Spotify will sometimes take this song off or Netflix is not carrying whatever show anymore,” McNemar said. “I’ve kind of just gone back to physical format. It’s just nice to have, and it’s nice to look at too. Some say they see [physical media] as a chore, but it’s kind of cool to have it and be like, ‘Check this out.’”
What now?
Although independent bookstores have proven resilient to everything thrown at them so far, the media landscape is constantly evolving and new challenges will undoubtedly present themselves.
One of these is Amazon, which with its recent launch of Your Books — a personalized space to explore all print, Kindle and Audible books — aims to perfect a digitized version of the bookstore experience. The service claims to enable users to “conveniently explore all of your Amazon books in one place and offers personalized discovery features to help connect you to your next great read.”
But if Beers Books and other brick-and-mortar bookstores like it have anything to rely on, it’s their dedication to supporting and uplifting one another and their impeccable curation by book lovers who know their communities.
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