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FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2011, when Borders shut down, or 2007, when Amazon launched the Kindle, or maybe 1455, when Johannes Gutenberg went bankrupt immediately upon printing his game-changing best seller The Bible, the news about book publishing has seemed less than dire. A June 2019 New York Times article captured the mood: “Independent bookstores are thriving again, and print sales are rising while e-book sales are declining. Even Amazon is investing in physical bookstores across the country.”

A decade ago, few in the industry anticipated the comeback of indie bookstores. But the numbers are unambiguous: between 2009 and 2018, the number of indies in the US grew by nearly 40 percent. Ninety-nine stores opened in 2018, up from seventy-five in 2017. The indie model depends on expertise and endless hustle — as well as the active participation of consumers who have been galvanized by buy-local campaigns. The new independents host constant readings and book groups, and many also offer subscription programs and curated perks, like signed first editions, for their regular customers. Increasingly, the owners of these stores see their purpose in more ambitious terms: as rising rents threaten third places everywhere, indies’ physical locations become as valuable as their inventory. The stores are sleek and splashy and well-lighted places, their vision of reading centered on enthusiasm and edification. Their employees may be no less adventurous or snobby in their tastes than bookstore employees used to be, but now they hand-sell on social media, not just IRL. On the stores’ Instagrams, copies of Ducks, Newburyport and the latest Krasznahorkai pose on park benches next to scattered autumn leaves, or on beautifully pockmarked desks, latte adjacent. The bookstores have cats, and the cats, too, have Instagrams.

Publishers Weekly

A total of 1,500 people registered for Winter Institute 15, the American Booksellers Association’s annual conference for independent booksellers, which took place in Baltimore January 21–24. Of those registered, 800 were booksellers.

This year’s event opened with a variety of programs, including a symposium in Washington, D.C., focusing on efforts to combat Amazon’s market dominance in bookselling, hosted by the ABA. After agreeing that breaking up Amazon would be the simplest solution to lessening the e-tailer’s clout, many booksellers expressed dismay that the company may be too big for even the government to confront.

Still, they were urged on to action. “It is possible to initiate change,” said panelist Matt Stoller, author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy (S&S). “You have already started it—and we’ve had more antitrust conversation in our politics this election cycle than anytime in the previous 25 years.”