The headline says it all: The mammoth Portland indie bookseller laid off 31 employees today. Sarah Mirk at the Mercury has the story, including a scary sounding press release from Powell’s that reads, in part, “Given that company sales are down this fiscal year, and that we are projecting annual sales decreases for the next few years, we need to take immediate steps to scale the company to our sales.”
Powell’s Lays Off 31 Workers
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Told you they should have figured out a way to sell neon LED “bookplates” so people can figure out what the cute guy/girl on the bus/lightrail is reading on their iPad, iPhone, eReader … but fail to adapt or go to cheap paperbacks and it’s Designed By Tunnelers epic fail …
I just got the last part of a big order of Australian aboriginal art books from them. Next up: Mexican art and architecture. It’s hard to buy art books online, though, without seeing them first. But please, Powell’s, please don’t go!
@2, yes, Will, if only Powell’s had the wisdom and foresight to stock paperback books like you have repeatedly suggested.
(Note: Powell’s stocks well over a million paperbacks between their several stores).
I once game them my email address while visiting to notify me when an impossible-to-find, but not particularly valuable, out-of-print book came in. About 4 years later they got one in stock, a week later I had it.
I liked Powell’s long before that, but that will forever make them the best bookstore ever in my mind.
I tried my best, bought 3 books there last time I was in town …and the place was fucking PACKED with people, almost impossible to get around.
bummer
A coincidence that this happens on the same day that Paul Constant gets an e-reader? I think not.
I finally bought an LG Optimus V (Virgin Mobile) Android phone today. How do you kids use those little keys? It took me 30 minutes how to figure out how to unlock the thing after the guy at Radio Shack hooked it up for me (“glide” the lock button to the right…) and another 60 minutes to install the Rhapsody App.
Maybe its time for another review to see if writers overall are doing better or worse off another year into the e-reader world.
Do people actually buy books at Powell’s? I’ve always assumed that people just walked out the door with whatever they could fit in their coat pockets.
@10, I sentence you to two eternities collecting manure in hell.
There was no way this was not going to happen.
i apologize for the double negative. Sort of.
I wish Powell’s could employ the whole city. And 31 layoffs is a big hit here in Portland. But Powell’s is not going away. The store may compress or realign, but it will remain busy, full, and full of employees. They’re also one of the smartest internet booksellers. They started online in 1994, before Amazon. Aren’t the big three in internet book sales Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, and Powell’s? (That’s a family owned independent with four outlets, among the top in global internet sales.) Which one of these is not like the others? And I think they’ll soon segue back into publishing, as they did in the 1990s. Powell’s best days are still ahead of it, as lit culture anchors itself in the social richness of closely-knit scenes served by nimble, on-demand publishing, electronic and print.
Yes, of course, long live Powells. My point is that the economics of bookselling are in a tumult right now and will continue to be for some time to come. I have less faith in “the social richness of closely-knit scenes” than Matthew Stadler has as a sustainable economy for bookselling. New models will be created, yes, and new ways of selling work. But there will be less and less of what we now think of as booksellers in the world. And for those of us in love with that particular profession that’s a great sadness.
I’m 100% with Michael on working toward the good health of what we’ve known as booksellers. Stores like the old Bailey-Coy or the much smaller yet similarly important Pilot Books are vital organs in the body of lit culture. Some publishers and some booksellers will try to economize by going entirely online, but Pilot (and Powell’s, however it weathers these realignments) is evidence that something else goes on at brick-and-mortar stores. Pilot is tiny! And that interests me a lot. At Publication Studio we’re finding that small stores like Pilot can sell a lot of our books; not so for Elliott Bay or Powell’s. 2/3 of our bookstore sales are in Europe at small local shops (ProQM in Berlin; A Estante in Lisbon; Yvonne Lambert, admittedly fancier, in Paris) that serve a Pilot-like function in their cities — not big, but focused, potent, catalyzing. I think we might be returning to a much older model, wherein publishers and bookshops have tight associations (maybe, again, being one and the same?) that catalyze a self-identifying and narrow “scene,” wide-spread enough to make meaning and to make money.
I will hit up the Powells website more often. Honestly, everytime we drive to or through Portland, it is “We are going to the science museum and Powells right?” Yes I know, I have messed up kids. But Powells is right up there with the science museum. It is like the Ameoba of books.