U.S. BOOKSTORES - New Census Data!
The U.S. Economic Census bureau quietly released some numbers for the number of U.S. bookstores. I read the book industry's finest newsletter Shelf Awareness almost every day and haven't noticed an article about it, so I thought I would share what I found. It appears that bookstores are still okay. I'm still not surprised, no matter how many doomsday articles I read. If you will recall, in my post from August 2014, the 2007 U.S. Economic Census breakdown for bookstores was:
The 2012 census shows:
Now, let's compare these new numbers with the Publishers Weekly article published in 2013. PW provided the following tallies in their article "Bookstores in America, 2013: A State-by-State Guide" showing every bookstore they could find in all fifty U.S. states, in 2012:
The PW numbers are quite askew. It appears that they found fewer stores, but I made note of this in my previous article: PW did not include 1,000 religious stores. But they sure did find a lot of indies! Recall that the 2007 census showed 2,800 indies, so can we assume that PW's definition of an "indie" bookstore was quite broad? Perhaps they included garage and estate sales as independent booksellers.
So what is the conclusion? Here are the census numbers again:
Almost 1,900 new bookstores were added in those five years. Over 1,000 of these new stores were indies! Nearly 900 were chains. We can see that there are also 432 additional firms.
One thing that can be said is that indie bookstores are not dying. And if Amazon and/or ebooks were the cancer everyone thought they were it's safe to say that it's in remission. Americans still love bookstores. They may not be as ubiquitous as they used to be, but neither is Main Street, Anytown, USA. If you needed nails, you'd walk to the local hardware store; now you've got to drive five minutes to Home Depot to get them.
The local appliance dealer is Best Buy.
The local fruit stand, butcher, and baker are Costco and Wal-Mart.
The local video store is Netflix.
The local record store is iTunes.
The local book store is: Anytown, USA
5,347 total bookstores
2,843 indies
2,504 chains
The 2012 census shows:
7,244 total stores
3,877 indies
3,367 chains
Now, let's compare these new numbers with the Publishers Weekly article published in 2013. PW provided the following tallies in their article "Bookstores in America, 2013: A State-by-State Guide" showing every bookstore they could find in all fifty U.S. states, in 2012:
PW Weekly
6,335 total stores
5,043 indies
1,292 chains
2012 Census
7,244 total stores
3,877 indies
3,367 chains
The PW numbers are quite askew. It appears that they found fewer stores, but I made note of this in my previous article: PW did not include 1,000 religious stores. But they sure did find a lot of indies! Recall that the 2007 census showed 2,800 indies, so can we assume that PW's definition of an "indie" bookstore was quite broad? Perhaps they included garage and estate sales as independent booksellers.
So what is the conclusion? Here are the census numbers again:
2007 Census
5,347 total stores
2,843 indies
2,504 chains
2012 Census
7,244 total stores
3,877 indies
3,367 chains
Almost 1,900 new bookstores were added in those five years. Over 1,000 of these new stores were indies! Nearly 900 were chains. We can see that there are also 432 additional firms.
One thing that can be said is that indie bookstores are not dying. And if Amazon and/or ebooks were the cancer everyone thought they were it's safe to say that it's in remission. Americans still love bookstores. They may not be as ubiquitous as they used to be, but neither is Main Street, Anytown, USA. If you needed nails, you'd walk to the local hardware store; now you've got to drive five minutes to Home Depot to get them.
The local appliance dealer is Best Buy.
The local fruit stand, butcher, and baker are Costco and Wal-Mart.
The local video store is Netflix.
The local record store is iTunes.
The local book store is: Anytown, USA
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