Don't Call it a Comeback: Up North's Indie Bookstores Defy Odds

The reports of independent bookstores’ collective demise have been greatly exaggerated

By Craig Manning | Dec. 18, 2021

Independent bookstores weren’t supposed to make it to 2021.

For decades, this embattled segment of the retail marketplace has faced one existential threat after another 

First, it was the invasion of big box bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble, sneaking in and stealing market share because they were able to stock more books and charge lower prices.

Then, it was the rise of Amazon.com, which got its start as an online marketplace for books, transformed the reading world in 2007 with the Kindle e-book reading device, and has subsequently reshaped the entire retail landscape.

A decade ago, the prediction was that e-books and tablets would put the final nail in the coffin of indie bookstores, if not physical books in general. After all, digital technology had completely altered patterns of consumption in music listening and was in the process of doing the same for television and films. Why would books be immune to the same digital revolution that killed CDs, DVDs, and other relics of physical media?

Even last year, predictions of doom and extinction for indie booksellers weren’t hard to come by. “Is This the End of the Indie Bookstore?” asked a New Republic headline in April 2020, as the rise of the novel coronavirus hit brick-and-mortar retail like a bomb. Bookstores, especially, seemed unlikely to survive, given their status as places for people to gather and linger — not to mention the fact that browsing for books has never exactly been a touchless experience.

IMPROBABLE GROWTH
But the reports of independent bookstores’ collective demise have been greatly exaggerated. Despite everything — the big-box boom, the arrival of e-readers, the Amazon factor, and even COVID-19 — indie bookselling is actually … growing?

Just look at the data from the American Booksellers Association (ABA), a nonprofit trade association that exists to promote and support independent bookstores. In 2009, the ABA spanned 1,401 members and 1,651 store locations. At that time, ABA’s numbers had been dropping every year for the duration of the 2000s, and for the majority of the 1990s before that. But in 2010, ABA tracked its first membership increase in almost two decades: 1,410 members. Improbably, those numbers continued to increase over the course of the 2010s, with dozens of new member bookstores opening each year. By 2019, the ABA’s membership had swelled to 1,887 and its number of member stores was up to 2,524 locations. 

Of course, bookstores did take a hit due to the pandemic. ABA’s 2021 numbers are sobering, as membership has fallen to 1,700 this year and store locations are down to 2,100. But with many parts of the economy stabilizing again after 2020’s unprecedented shutdowns, it’s likely that most of the bookstores that have held on this long will live to fight another day. 

Several of those bookstores are right here in northern Michigan, and they’re not just surviving; they’re thriving. Despite years of upheaval, uncertainty, and talk about their obsolescence, the region’s local bookstores have survived for a range of reasons. The Northern Express spoke to four of those stores — Brilliant Books and Horizon Books, in downtown Traverse City; McLean & Eakin Booksellers, in Petoskey; and Cottage Book Shop, in Glen Arbor — to learn their secrets to outlasting all the extinction-level events that were supposed to wipe them out.

A BRILLIANT BAR
“The whole reason for Brilliant Books is because everybody thought that [digital was going render physical books obsolete], and I didn't,” says Peter Makin, owner and founder of Brilliant Books. That business got its start in 2007 in Suttons Bay, before expanding to a second location in downtown Traverse City in 2011. In 2013, Brilliant Books lost its Suttons Bay lease and has since been a Traverse City-only business — at least in terms of physical storefronts.

Since early on, though, Makin has been branding Brilliant Books with the slogan of “Your Long-distance Local Bookstore” — five words that help explain why this particular bookstore proved its early doubters wrong.

“There was a movement afoot when we started that said, ‘Bookstores are brick and mortar things, and Amazon is online and evil,’” Makin says. “[Independent bookstores] felt that only brick-and-mortar bookstores were any good. And I just thought that was nonsense. So that’s why we’re now the nation’s ‘Long Distance Local Bookstore.’ Because people do want to buy things the way they want to buy things, and that might include online. And online doesn't have to mean Amazon or big box. It can mean anyone who's got an online presence, and we have a very strong one.”

Makin says he was “shouted down in conferences” for suggesting that a brick-and-mortar indie bookstore could shed the traditional bookstore business model and move aggressively toward modernization. To this day, Makin notes that it’s not uncommon to find a local bookstore with little to no web presence. Brilliant Books, meanwhile, has gone all-in online. The store’s website frequently highlights book recommendations from staff members, including blurbs arguing in favor of each chosen title. An active email newsletter keeps readers far and wide in the loop on the store’s latest events, deals, and book recommendations. And a comprehensive online database allows readers to order virtually any book they can think of from Brilliant Books and get it shipped to them for free (though locals can also opt to pick up orders at the store).

Most crucial of all, Makin says, is the Brilliant Books Monthly subscription service, a “highly personalized book selection service” where readers fill out a preference card and then get one book – hand-selected by a Brilliant Books bookseller – sent to them each month for a year. Every month, Brilliant Books ships out subscription boxes to more than 2,000 people, all over the country. The service, which was one of the first book subscription models of its kind, is regularly mentioned in articles and on comparison sites alongside other big-name book-of-the-month clubs, and it has even been featured in the New York Times. Between those subscription boxes and other online orders, Brilliant Books is practically an e-commerce business — just one that happens to have a small-town downtown storefront.

“We are the post office’s biggest customer downtown,” Makin says with a laugh. “We ship out thousands of books every month. So, our shipping operation is huge. I think the way that it breaks down is that about a third of our revenues come from the store itself, another third is the online bookstore thing, and another third is the book of the month. People often ask, ‘How on earth do two bookstores survive in a tiny town like Traverse City?’ And it's because one of them has a completely different business model to pretty much any other bookstore in the country.”

AN INSTITUTION
Downtown Traverse City’s other bookstore, Horizon Books, is perhaps northern Michigan’s most beloved bookselling institution. Founded in 1961, Horizon has operated stores in Traverse City, Cadillac, Petoskey, and Beulah. The TC and Cadillac locations continue to operate today.

Where Brilliant Books has focused itself on the “Long-distance Local Bookstore” concept, Horizon Books is largely a hyper-local operation. The stores prominently display books by local and Michigan authors — many of them signed copies — and in-store events spotlight those same local writers. Amy Reynolds, one of Horizon’s two co-owners, also points to the Horizon stores as key community gathering spaces in northern Michigan. Add a lucrative partnership with Traverse City’s National Writers Series, and it’s clear that Horizon’s local roots run deep. 

Horizon’s value to the community may have been even higher than Reynolds and her husband — the business’s founder, Vic Herman — realized. In January 2020, Reynolds and Herman announced that they would be closing the downtown Traverse City location of Horizon Books sometime that year, citing retirement plans and challenges with operating a bookstore with such a large physical footprint (the Traverse City store is 22,000 square feet). A massive outpouring of public support and good will for the store — combined with a $26,000 investment from the Traverse City Downtown Development Authority (DDA) and Rotary Charities, to fund research into potential uses and tenants for the sprawling space — caused Reynolds and Herman to change course.

“When we announced closing, it was for retirement reasons, not because [Horizon] wasn't still a viable business,” Reynolds says. “But our plans have changed. I'm very glad that we were able to retain and maintain ownership through this [pandemic], because I don't know who else could have. It's been difficult, and for somebody to start new during COVID would have been nearly impossible. So we're very happy to say that we plan on being here for years to come, and we will be the owners. As you deal with choices, you want to have several up your sleeve, and we have just made a different choice than we did a year and a half ago.”

“We aren't just selling books,” Reynolds adds. “What we're doing is providing a community resource and community gathering space, as well. And people value that.”

SMALL TOWNS, BELOVED BOOKSTORES
That idea — that customers value independent bookstores for more than just the products they sell — holds true at other northern Michigan book retailers, as well. At McLean & Eakin in Petoskey, for instance, business owner Matt Norcross points to in-store author events as the element that put the small-town bookstore on the map in the first place.

“My mom opened the store in 1992 and did very well by focusing on events,” Norcross says. “That’s how she made a great name for the store: fantastic events and fantastic customer service.”

Events have remained a big piece of the puzzle at McLean & Eakin over the course of its nearly 30 years in business. While the National Writers Series is Traverse City’s premiere author-event draw, McLean & Eakin has gotten a surprising number of notable authors to make the trek to Petoskey. Those include 2020 Pulitzer Prize finalist Ann Patchett; “Ready Player One” novelist Ernest Cline; Sue Grafton, the writer of the popular “alphabet” detective series (“’A’ Is for Alibi,” “‘B’ Is for Burglar,” etc.); acclaimed fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss, known for “The Kingkiller Chronicle” trilogy; and popular children’s/young author Garth Nix.

Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor, meanwhile, serves its own unique purpose as a key resource for people visiting northern Michigan. According to Sue Boucher, who bought the store in 2014 shortly after moving to the area, the shop’s most popular titles tend to be books about the local region — whether that means histories, photo books, tourism guides, or fictional tales set in northern Michigan. 

“Cottage is different from other bookstores in that it’s really a resort store,” Boucher says. “Many of our customers come from away and come to the area every summer. Our customers are people who are summer residents and people that are just visitors, as well as local people. So, I think one of the big things for us is just connecting people to the area. We make sure we have local books or books about the area. So, particular with us, local books about Sleeping Bear, books about Glen Arbor or Glen Haven, books about the Manitou islands. We try to have as many of those types of books as possible, because those are specific books that customers can really only get in the area, and that they might not find somewhere else.” 

Still, while both McLean & Eakin and Cottage Book Shop have embraced traditional roles that have historically fallen to local indie bookshops — connecting readers with authors, providing valuable local resources to shoppers — both are also evolving with the times. That’s in part because both stores are based in resort towns that blossom with activity and traffic in the summertime but taper off during the shoulder seasons. 

“We’re kind of the reverse of a traditional bookstore,” Boucher says. “A traditional bookstore, their fourth quarter is their biggest quarter. And in our case, it's the summer.”

How can indie bookstores survive in small tourist towns when tourist traffic dwindles and seasonal residents head for warmer climates? It’s a question that Norcross and his wife wanted to answer when they took over McLean & Eakin as second-generation owners a decade ago. 

“We’ve always wanted to cater to a customer no matter where they are,” Norcross says. “So many of our customers leave during the off-season, so we became very aware that it was worthwhile to try and stay with that customer, if we could, all year long. We did a lot of things to help that along. My wife began writing a weekly email that goes out every Monday, and it now has about 14,000 people [subscribed]. That’s really kept us connected with our customers the whole year. We also always told our staff that we wanted to not argue about the format. We never cared if the customer wanted paperback or hardcover, so why would we care if they wanted a digital audiobook or an e-book? And so we very quickly pursued options for independent stores to sell digitally, when those options became available.”

As a result, these days, you can buy any type of book from McLean & Eakin — be it a brand-new hardcover, an audiobook file to play on your phone, or an e-book to read on your tablet. Of course, there have been fluctuations there, too. Interest in e-books has dwindled significantly over the past decade, while audiobooks have skyrocketed in popularity — particularly among visitors looking for something to listen to on the drive or flight back home.

A DURABLE PRODUCT
Even with all the shifting tides of technology in the book world, though, the biggest surprise indie bookstores have seen over the past 20 years might be the durability of the physical book as a desirable commodity.

Why have books survived the trends of digitalization that have shaken other entertainment industries to the core, and why was there never a true Spotify or Netflix for books?

Our local experts have their opinions on the matter. Both Reynolds and Boucher, for instance, point to studies, which have found that readers retain information better when they read on paper than when they read digitally. Makin says there is a unique comfort to holding a physical book that can’t be replicated by a Kindle or an iPad. And Norcross notes that physical media in general — from books to vinyl records to Blu-Ray discs — seems to be making a comeback.

“The pendulum has swung back our way,” Norcross says. “The iPad or tablet never really reflected what you were doing [when you were reading]. Whereas, when you had the big Harry Potter in your hand, that was way cooler because it transmitted something about you. It telegraphed that ‘Hey, I’m reading a big book; I’m not just playing Angry Birds.’

“There was something to that, and I think it’s become a coveted idea. And so, the appreciation of the book as a physical object has only come to be appreciated more. The proof of that trend is also the fact that I’ve been selling vinyl records in the store for the last five years, and it's only grown. I brought that idea in, and my wife was very not convinced. But it's held its own. So, I think the analog object, the physical object, is something people really want right now. The appreciation of these creature comforts and tactile things, it’s only increasing.”