Column by Hal Walter
Literature – March 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
IF YOU WERE TO TAKE an analytical look at the businesses in Westcliffe and try to make some sense out of the population, you might surmise a populace of heavy-drinking real-estate investors who buy a lot of tools, are wired on coffee and subsist on pizza, but do not eat fresh vegetables or read books.
After all, the metropolitan district of our county of under 4,000 people has two liquor stores, about a dozen real-estate offices (I’ve lost count), three coffee shops, two groceries where fresh produce is a hit-or-miss proposition, an upscale pizza joint, a hardware store the size of the entire downtown area, and, now, no bookstore.
Hungry Gulch Books and Trails is closing its doors this winter after nearly seven years of business. Owners Michael O’Hanlon and Susan Tichy will continue to deal rare, used and hard-to-find books from cyberspace rather than retail space. And they’ll do more traveling and writing.
Ironically, Internet competition for sales played a role in the decision to sell the property and move the business entirely online.
Nothing gets a writer’s attention quite like learning that the local bookstore is closing. The writing business is tough enough. But when the people selling the actual packaged words are closing shop, you know you’re in trouble. Susan and Michael have carried Colorado Central magazine for years, as well as my book, Pack-Burro Stories. They hosted a book-signing the summer I published it, the same way they did for other local and regional writers.
Perhaps one reason they were so supportive of local writers and writing is that they are writers themselves. Susan is an associate professor in George Mason University’s writing program and has a masters of fine arts in poetry. Her books reflect her many travels and include Hands in Exile, which was selected for the National Poetry Series in 1982, and A Smell of Burning Starts the Day. She is currently working on a third book, Trafficke: An Autobiography, which maps a family history from the Scottish Highlands to the origins of slavery in early Maryland.
Michael is the author of The Colorado Sangre de Cristo: A Complete Trail Guide. He has explored the Sangre de Cristo mountains for 25 years and climbed more than 60 peaks in the range. For several years he also served on the Custer Search and Rescue First Response Team.
What makes the closing of a small book store squeezed by the mega-sales machine of the Internet such an irony is the recent cutbacks and closures of dot-com companies. These companies blew through venture capital like a Central Colorado chinook, and I wonder how many small bookstores across the country are now just dust in the wind, or have had to make significant adjustments to stay alive.
In the case of Hungry Gulch, closing its doors and concentrating on Internet sales was the answer. Other bookstores, like First Street Books in Salida have branched out to Internet sales while also maintaining a large onhand selection of books in a cozy bookstore setting.
The book business is interesting, if not lucrative. When I decided to publish Pack-Burro Stories, I looked into submitting the manuscript to a publisher. I learned that I would have a difficult time getting a publisher interested in such an off-beat book with a limited sales potential.
And even if I did, I would be lucky to get 10% of sales, and something like 6% was more likely. I would get a whopping 72 cents for every $12 book sold. Mark Twain said that “publisher” is really just a fancy word for a swindler, and I have come to believe that he was and is correct.
SO I DECIDED TO SELF-PUBLISH; that way at least I could swindle myself. I am clearly not a businessman, but it was clear that this was the only way to come out ahead. It ended up costing nearly $4 to print each book, and the marketing costs took the amount I had invested in each book up even more. Still, local bookstores were willing to pay $7.20 for my $12 book, so I could make a couple dollars off each copy.
In Central Colorado I found several bookstores eager to carry my book, including First Street Books and Adventure Media in Salida, Creekside Books in Buena Vista, and The Book Mine in Leadville. The Mental Deli, a coffee shop, restaurant and bookstore in Fairplay carried my book until the shop was sold and became a coffee shop, restaurant and real-estate office. Back in Westcliffe, my book could be found at Hungry Gulch.
Hands down, The Book Mine sells the most copies of Pack-Burro Stories each year; after all, the store is located right at the start and finish line for the Leadville International Pack-Burro Race. But Hungry Gulch sold just as many as the other bookstores.
I also have the book available on amazon.com through its advantage program for independent publishers. What I’ve found is that Amazon, with its audience of millions, can’t even come close to competing with Central Colorado bookstores when it comes to selling my collection of stories.
Worse yet, they only take independent books on consignment, and the margin they pay independents puts them in the “publisher” category by Mark Twain standards.
WHAT AMAZON.COM and barnesandnoble.com can do better in the book business than all bookstores in Central Colorado combined is lose money.
At the end of January, amazon.com reported a $90.4 million loss for just the last quarter of 2000, and laid off 1,300 employees, about 15% of its staff. A few days later, barnesandnoble.com announced a $138 million loss for the last quarter of 2000, and laid off 350 people, 16% of its employees.
Excuse me, but how do you lose a few million dollars? Sure, I’ve lost $10 bills in the wash, and I’ve been known to piss away what I consider obscene amounts of money on outlandish food and drink from time to time.
But lose several hundred million? How do you do that? Well, one way you do that is by so heavily discounting the books that you lose money on every sale.
The irony is complete when you consider the plight of Hungry Gulch and First Street Books. Faced with the competition from these big losers, they went into Internet sales themselves, and they are running their online bookstores the same way they run (or ran) their retail bookstores — by keeping costs down, providing friendly service, knowing writing and writers, and treating these writers fairly. While Amazon and Barnes and Noble are blowing millions, local bookstores may not be making a ton of money on the Internet, but at least they are not losing millions.
In prospector vernacular a hungry gulch is any place that miners didn’t strike it rich. If the Internet giants want some business advice, they should give a couple of Central Colorado booksellers a call, or better yet contact them on the Internet at www.hungrygulch.com. I’m sure for a couple million they’d be happy to consult.
Hal Walter writes and publishes books from a hungry gulch of his own near Westcliffe.