MISSOULA — With shelves full of books behind her, Fact and Fiction manager Barbara Theroux was busy dressing her bookstore’s front window with holiday cheer. Among the decorations featured prominently was a large poster encouraging passers-by to “shop indie.”
Back among the bookshelves, Theroux prepared a display that included a new line of e-reading devices and alerted readers to the fact that millions of titles are being offered by Fact and Fiction online.
The bookstore is selling e-books, e-readers and e-accessories at factandfictionbooks.com through Kobo, a Canadian e-reading company that has partnered with the American Association of Booksellers to help offer its service to independent booksellers.
The expanded online service isn’t an acknowledgement by Theroux that paper books are going away anytime soon — sales of that kind have been good this year at the store on North Higgins Avenue.
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Instead, the new Kobo e-book offering is yet another way to keep Fact and Fiction viable in a sluggish Missoula economy in which consumer spending has yet to bounce back to pre-recession levels.
“I just feel what it does is give us a playing field,” Theroux said. “A book is a book and the book isn’t going away, but any business has to pay attention to where customers are acquiring a product and how they're accessing it. ... It’s a nice way to say, 'Yes readers, yes customers, we’re listening.' "
At the Book Exchange across town, sales are down 4 percent this year. It’s the first year since 1994 — when big retail clusters began to pop up on North Reserve Street — that the new and used bargain book store has seen a decline in growth, manager Becky Haddad said.
“I think two things hit us: the recession seems to have hit pretty late and the other is e-books, of course,” said Haddad, who has heard from other retailers in the “midtown” area that it’s been a stagnant sales year.
In fact, retail has been weak across the state, said Patrick Barkey, director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Montana.
“Unemployment rates are relatively low in Missoula, but Missoula really serves all of Western Montana. Flathead and Ravalli (counties) are still hurting; that’s hurting Missoula,” Barkey said.
An increase in new home construction is projected in Missoula in 2013 and that could have a positive trickle-down effect for small businesses like Fact and Fiction and the Book Exchange, Barkey said.
“There’s just a huge amount of spending that occurs (because of new home construction) and a lot of it occurs in retail,” Barkey said.
However they read, Theroux wants customers to know that Fact and Fiction can accommodate them by doing what it does best: selling books.
Theroux likes that Kobo offers some self-published titles. Fact and Fiction’s brick-and-mortar store is packed with local authors’ pieces, and Kobo may be able to offer the work of local authors.
“There were times when it was hard to be optimistic,” Theroux said, but she is encouraged about 2013.
The Book Exchange has seen an 18 percent jump in sales since Thanksgiving, and Haddad hopes a good 2013 will follow.
Once the e-book industry has “settled,” Haddad thinks things will bounce back for bargain book sellers like the Book Exchange. Because of that, store won’t be venturing into the e-books industry.
Instead, it will rely on what it’s always doing — offering readers what they want at affordable prices, Haddad said.
“The emphasis will be on books as they’ve always been; we know they will also be around. That’s the bottom line for us,” she said. “E-books have their place and they will take a corner of the market, but the market for all kinds of books in all kinds of formats is always going to be here.”
Missoulian reporter Jenna Cederberg may be reached at 406-523-5241 or jenna.cederberg@missoulian.com.
