SEATTLE — A love of books and bookstores runs deep in the sinews of this city, where gray skies and drizzle can drive a person to drink, or read, or both. A long-running annual survey ranks Seattle the country's second-most literate big city, behind Washington, D.C., as measured by things like the number of bookstores, library resources, newspaper circulation and education.
Amazon.com Inc. also calls Seattle home. And in recent years, as many small independent bookstores here and around the nation struggled or closed their doors, owners often placed blame for their plight on the giant online retailer's success in delivering best sellers at discount prices, e-readers and other commodities of the digital marketplace.
"They seem to be after everyone and everything," one Seattle-area bookstore owner, Roger Page, fulminated on his store's blog last year. He added, "I believe there is a real chance that they will ruin the publishing world."
But now there are signs of a thaw in those tensions, at least here in the city that most embodied them. As Amazon has exploded with growth, hiring thousands of tech workers at its downtown headquarters and helping bolster the Seattle economy, local bookstore owners have seen a surprising new side of the company they loved to hate: Many Amazon employees, it turns out, are readers who are not shopping at the company store.
"A lot of our customers work at Amazon,"! said Tracy Taylor, the general manager at the Elliott Bay Book Company, one of the city's largest independent booksellers. The store, about a mile from Amazon headquarters, last year earned what Ms. Taylor called the "first substantial profit" in almost 20 years, enough to even pay employee bonuses.
Whether it is Amazon or something else, the broader pattern is unmistakable, said Oren J. Teicher, the chief executive of the American Booksellers Association, a national bookstore trade group. "Seattle has become one of the most successful independent bookstore cities in the country," he said.
Tom Nissley, 46, a writer and former Amazon employee with 10 years at the company who lives with his family in northern Seattle, embodies this odd new dé! tente. In his old life, he was a senior editor, helping Amazon promote and choose featured book titles for its website. Then, in 2010, he won enough money on the television quiz show "Jeopardy!" — about $235,000 as an eight-game champion — to quit his day job and write full time, publishing last fall a compendium of literary history and trivia, called "A Reader's Book of Days."
Last month, Mr. Nissley's bookish-in-Seattle tale came full circle when he signed a contract to buy and run his own small independent bookstore. The shop, Santoro's, which he plans to rename Phinney Books, is in a neighborhood, Phinney Ridge, with plenty of Amazon employees, many of whom Mr. Nissley knows as former colleagues or neighbors, and who he hopes will shop at his store (or at least come in to offer commiseration and advice). The purchase price, essentially the v! alue of the inventory, was $35,000.
"I think I know what I'm getting into," he said. "I hope so."
The soon-to-be-Phinney is by no means a Goliath. At 1,200 square feet, and about 5,000 titles on the shelves, it is a retail space that might have once fit a five-and-dime. Glass windows open onto the street where other local businesses like Bluebird Ice Cream, Caffe Vita and Cornuto Pizza line the block.
Part of Mr. Nissley's optimism is that he believes local shops have increasingly found their feet in how to avoid competition with Amazon, or other giant retailers, by offering services or products that only a local can provide. He plans to offer, in addition to books, a line of p! aper goods, toys and vinyl handbags made by the business that his wife, Laura Silverstein, started.
He is also convinced, he said, that the e-book revolution, which seemed ready a few years ago to sweep away the old world of pages and print, has reached a plateau. Publishers, wanting to keep independent bookstores alive, have also helped — easing traditional repayment rules for books, or helping with promotions or advertising.
As a backup plan, he was hoping for some additional earnings from appearing on "Jeopardy!" again as part of a runoff of past champions, called "Battle of the Decades." (However, he lost on the first day of the return tournament.) He is also finishing a novel, which he hopes will one day sit alongside his other book on a! shelf at Phinney Books.
The strength of the local economy and the shop-local movement underpins everything, as even Mr. Page, the bookstore owner, concedes, despite his Amazon-size fears. He co-owns Island Books with his wife, Nancy.
"Amazon makes great contributions to the vitality of Seattle," Mr. Page said in an interview. "They are putting their footprint right down in the middle of Seattle and they're pouring a lot of money and energy into it, and it is one of several drivers that are making this a vibrant, interesting and expensive place to live."
And Amazon as a big local employer also means Amazon as a big producer of Amazon expatriates like Mr. Nissley with bookselling experience. Two of Isl! and Books' 10 employees, Mr. Page said, also once worked at Amazon.
Mr. Nissley said that some of his favorite memories of Amazon were the early years when employees at headquarters would occasionally be asked to pitch in at the warehouse, helping pack books before they went out into the world. In his new shop, he said, he will be going back in a way to that simpler time.
"Maybe it's an effect of living your life online — that you also want these physical things," he said.
Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/us/bookstores-in-seattle-soar-and-embrace-an-old-nemesis-amazoncom.html
