Bookstore revolution

DAN ROTTENBERG

If you saw the 1998 film You’ve Got Mail, you know the scenario: A giant nationwide bookstore chain (run by Tom Hanks, in the movie) opens a new branch that drives a cozy little independent bookshop (run by Meg Ryan) out of business. That depressing story has played out in cities across America for a generation. Of the 4,000 mom-and-pop bookstores that operated in 1990, more than 1,000 have closed their doors, according to the American Booksellers Association. And that’s what logically should have happened in 1990 when the Borders chain descended on Rittenhouse Square, just around the corner from the small but venerable family-owned Joseph Fox Bookshop.

Borders’ first Philadelphia outlet offered 21,000 square feet of merchandise on three floors, big discounts, benches for browsers, free nightly literary events, plus what was then a genuine novelty for the bookstore business: a coffee bar and café. Fox Bookshop, by contrast, was squished into 500 cramped square feet below sidewalk level on Sansom Street. It offered no discounts, no remainders, no coffee, no benches, no best-sellers or bodice-rippers— just a solid inventory of literary classics and esoteric non-fiction managed by a small staff of bibliophiles blessed with an intimate knowledge of their customers and their taste in books.

No contest— giant inevitably squashes ant, right? Well, I am happy to report that today, a dozen years after this supposed mismatch began, both Joseph Fox and the Center City Borders have expanded into larger quarters. They have grown and flourished in the past dozen years even though still another competitor— the even larger Barnes & Noble chain branch, carrying 125,000 titles plus yet another café— jumped into the Rittenhouse Square market in 1997. Instead of destroying each other, these three booksellers have forced each other to sharpen their acts. The net result has been a win-win situation for them and, more important, for Center City’s street life— especially its nighttime street life.

Prior to 1990, what little night life existed in Philadelphia was limited to two entertainment areas: South Street and Delaware Avenue. There was no Avenue of the Arts, no Kimmel Center, no Convention Center. The city had a single luxury-class hotel (the Four Seasons). There were less than one-third the number of restaurants that Center City enjoys today. After 5 p.m., the main Center City sidewalks were largely owned by homeless street people.

Just when civic activists were bemoaning the hopelessness of this situation, Borders (and later Barnes & Noble) moved in with an original marketing strategy: namely, the more people you can entice into your store and the more time you can get them to spend hanging out there, the better, even if they don’t intend to buy anything— because if they hang around long enough, most likely they will buy something.

That philosophy (known in the trade as “experience marketing”) dictated that Borders and B&N shouldn’t operate as mere bookstores but as communal “literary centers.” All those free meet-the author events, discussion groups, children’s programs and browser benches were designed to encourage people to come in and stay as long as possible. You could find all these activities at the Free Library too, of course. But at Borders you could also sip a cappuccino, munch on a muffin and shop for gifts. (And of course the Free Library isn’t open as late.)

Barnes & Noble’s arrival just up Walnut from Borders at first mystified customers like me, who found the two chains indistinguishable. But over the past six years a difference in formats has emerged: Borders is younger, hipper, trendier; B&N, with its dark woods and soft colors, conveys more the feel of an old English library.

Thanks to these literary superstores (abetted, to be sure, by an explosion of gourmet restaurants, coffee houses and upscale sandwich bars), the sidewalks around Rittenhouse Square became destination points for culture mavens, latté-slurpers and single professionals hoping to meet Mr. or Ms. Right at a reading by Elmore Leonard or Joyce Carol Oates. Borders and Barnes & Noble didn’t specifically set out to solve Philadelphia’s downtown problems, but inadvertently that’s what they did.

Meanwhile, the Joseph Fox store around the corner was forced to respond to this newer, larger, more aggressive competition. Michael Fox, the store’s second-generation owner, realized that his store had to attract more customers to remain viable. Borrowing a page from his giant neighbors, he decided to start sponsoring authors’ readings of his own.

But what possible inducement could a one-room basement store offer to attract visiting authors? Michael Fox toted up his assets and discovered that he enjoyed several advantages over the national chains: a loyal base of customers and suppliers, a reputation for knowledgeable individual service, a blissful lack of corporatized bureaucracy, and a local network of well-connected friends. Even the Fox store’s lack of space turned out to be a blessing in disguise: It forced Michael Fox to venture beyond his cramped quarters to find speaking venues that were far more exciting than the improvised spaces the chain stores could offer.

When Philadelphia gallery owner Helen Drutt English wrote a book called Jewelry of Our Time, for example, she threw a party at the elegant Philadelphia Art Alliance on Rittenhouse Square and enlisted Fox to sell her book there. The success of that event led to another Fox-sponsored book party at the Art Alliance, this one for Robert Fagles, translator of Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey. These 3,000-year-old works aren’t exactly best-sellers, but the combination of the tony location and Fox’s mailing list produced a standing-room-only crowd.

As word of these parties spread, Michael Fox was invited to hold an author event at Friends Select School, his alma mater. Soon he was doing regular book parties there, not to mention at other stylish Center City spots like the Athenaeum and the Union League. Before long, New York authors and publishers were clamoring to use Michael Fox’s special-events services. Three years ago, he was asked to organize an event for the former boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter because, said a publicist for Carter’s publisher Houghton Mifflin, “Michael knew how to get the word out to Philadelphia’s African-American population.”

The end result? On its 50th anniversary in 2001, Joseph Fox Bookshop vacated its basement premises and occupied the 1,000-square-foot suite overhead— double its old space— that the Fox family had previously rented out to a boutique.

Which brings me to another overlooked advantage the Foxes enjoyed: Unlike Borders and Barnes & Noble, they owned their building. When Borders lost its lease this year, it was forced to vacate its Walnut Street location. But that too turned out to be a blessing in disguise. This past spring Borders reopened in a new location at Broad and Chestnut— yes, on the Avenue of the Arts— that’s 20% larger than the old place, with huge windows facing Broad Street and an atrium and chandeliers left over from the old Philadelphia National Bank.

This new Borders offers 200,000 titles, including some 40,000 CDs and DVDs. Its mezzanine café is actually ten times the size of the old one— larger than many Center City restaurants, and big enough to host live music performers like Lyle Lovett and Dar Williams. (Barnes & Noble’s Rittenhouse Square branch, meanwhile, has increased its offerings close to the 200,000 level as well.)

In many respects the new Center City Borders is more of a lounge than a bookstore, but so what? The bottom line (as Paul Levy of the Center City District has already pointed out) is that this same Borders that jump-started the nighttime economy of West Walnut Street in 1990 is now performing the same function for the east side of Chestnut. The psychologist Havelock Ellis once observed that “The by-product is sometimes more important than the product.” In this case, the product is books; the by-product is a revitalized Center City.

Monthly calendars of free events are available at Barnes & Noble (1805 Walnut St.) and Borders (Broad and Chestnut). Joseph Fox Books is located at 1724 Sansom St.)