By Jane Mosgrove
Some local used-book store owners say they’re not willing to close their stores to go totally online, despite the benefits of a global market and lower operating costs.
Patrick McGahern, owner of McGahern Books, runs two bookstores, one on Sparks Street and the other on Bank Street.
McGahern has been selling books for over 30 years and seen many changes to the business.
He says he has watched bookselling move from storefronts to the Internet.
McGahern Books sells from both.
According to McGahern, the benefits of selling online are great, but it would be “foolish” to shut down his stores in favour of the Internet since he still buys and sells a lot of books in his stores.
McGahern says interaction with customers is important and often individuals will bring in entire book collections to sell. He says he cannot find books this easily on the Net.
McGahern says he decided to take his stores online when GST was introduced in the early 1990s.
He says the number of walk-in buyers decreased as an initial reaction to the tax.
He also says he wanted to find an additional way to sell his books.
Like McGahern, over half of the used-book stores in Ottawa have put some or all of their titles on the Net.
McGahern is also one of 16 used bookstores in Ottawa that is with abebooks.com, an Internet service that lists more than 5,700 bookstores from around the world.
Advanced Book Exchange (ABE) allows booksellers to post lists of books they want to sell.
McGahern says he has about 4,000 books listed with ABE.
He says he sells up to eight a day on the Net, amounting to about 25 per cent of his total sales.
Gail and Otto Graser own Arlington Books, another used bookstore in Ottawa that sells online while also maintaining a storefront.
Arlington Books was one of the first used bookstores in Ottawa to have its own Web site. It has also been with abebooks.com since 1996.
Gail Graser says their book sales have more than doubled since they went with ABE. About 80 per cent of their Internet sales go to the U.S.
Being online has a lot of perks, says Otto Graser.
“The advantage is that you have the whole world as a customer, it’s really indescribable,” he says. “It’s also dramatic and a lot of fun when you wake up in the morning and you have e-mail from someone in Istanbul who wants a book.”
Internet book selling can add to, but not replace a good bookstore, says Gail Graser.
In addition to buying books, customers come to the store to visit, she says.
Some bookstore owners cannot resist the advantages of putting their bookstores completely online.
Wendy MacLeod owned the Book Review on Dalhousie Street for about a year- and-a-half before she closed it down in January and went totally online.
MacLeod says she enjoyed the personal interaction of the storefront and would like to open one again.
But, for now, operating entirely online makes more sense.
“It gives you more bang for your buck,” she says.
MacLeod says it costs her about $100 a month to run her store online, including fees to abebooks.com and her Internet provider.
The storefront costs were $1,000 a month. She says more than $800 of that went to rent.
MacLeod estimates she has sold about 250 books on ABE since she first opened her bookstore and about 90 to 95 per cent of those sales have been to the U.S.