Leilani Tacata, 11, of Petaluma spent her Saturday afternoon with her dad, John, of San Leandro, browsing the Book Shop for her soon to be favorites, saying she feels a more personal connection to the store as opposed to ordering books online because of the people.

The 52-year-old Hayward landmark may be nearing the final pages in its long and storied history.

The Book Shop, located in downtown Hayward, is struggling financially and could face the reality of having to shut down as early as June.

Don’t tell that to Renee Rettig, a quirky 16-year veteran employee and local institution of the store, whose passion for books, sharing her knowledge and serving customers is constantly on display.

“This is something that is absolutely going to endure,” says Rettig.

“We are merely caretakers of something that is so much bigger than ourselves,” she added with a quiet zeal, referring to the inspiration and guidance she received from the previous two owners and their shared fervor for books.

Recent national trends might suggest her belief is well founded.

American Booksellers Association (ABA) Technology Director Matt Supko says the common narrative about the struggling independent bookstore had its time, but may not be true any longer.

“We have data that suggests independent bookstores are doing pretty well right now,” said Supko. “All through the 1990s and 2000s, ABA members went down, but over the last two or three years, we’ve gained close to 100 members. We’re seeing more bookstores opening and less stores closing.”

Carl Baker-Madsen — an East Bay native, one of four partners in the current and third ownership group of the Book Shop — is a retiree with a passion for books, reading and a former patron of the Shop, but admits that the bookstore is the first business he has been in charge of.

“The outlook for the store is not really that rosy,” says Baker-Madsen.

Facing rising rent costs and consistently hemorrhaging cash over the past few years, June may serve as the denouement to this local retail outpost’s story.

While the Shop may not be constantly bustling with activity, you’d be hard pressed to find a patron of the store who doesn’t speak highly of their wWwWpersonal connection to it.

Stephen Johnson, 68, of Oakland makes the drive when time permits to visit the Book Shop.

“The reason I come here is because it has a gigantic collection of used paperback mysteries that are all almost out of print that you can’t get anywhere else,” said Johnson with a smile.
As the sole remaining independent bookstore in a city the size of Hayward – Alameda County’s third largest city with just over 144,000 residents – the Book Shop may seem an unlikely casualty.

While no single root of the trouble is evident, there are myriad of underlying issues that could be playing a role in the lack of revenue for the store.

Roughly 19 percent of Alameda County residents over the age of 16 are illiterate, according to a 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy published by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

That means nearly one in every five residents is lacking basic literacy skills.

More troubling are the numbers from the 1992 NCES assessment of the same kind, which showed a 13 percent illiteracy rate, suggesting that the illiterate population in Alameda County is on an upward track.

Another factor is the prevalence of e-book sales. Amazon’s Kindle e-reader and controversially low price points on e-books (most popular titles start at $9.99) have caused waves in the industry.

Although Amazon is notorious for not releasing hard numbers to the media, what they have said is telling. In mid-2011, Amazon announced it’s e-book sales had officially eclipsed paperback sales from the site.

During the last nine weeks of 2011, Kindle sales including the Kindle Fire tablet increased 177 percent compared to the previous year during the same time frame.
Amazon’s current market cap is valued at nearly $86 billion.

Amazon’s dominance and influence in the pricing game surrounding e-books helped name it as a possible target and motivating factor pushing Apple and five publishing houses to collude to fix prices on e-books, as is currently being alleged by the U.S. Department of Justice.

While the Book Shop sells e-books through a reseller contract with Google, it hasn’t taken hold.

“We’re trying to get our customers to realize that we sell e-books, because nobody really knows,” says Baker-Madsen. Google recently announced that it would discontinue the reseller program as of January 31, 2013, due to low numbers.

The biggest reason for the lack of customers could possibly be the people of Hayward.

Supko notes that there are other independent bookstores in the Bay Area who are making “shop local” movements work for them, and are succeeding. He suggests that the results of bookstores depend less on money, race or class.

“It’s more about the connection people have to the place they live. Do they feel a strong sense of value in shopping in [their] community?” asked Supko.
Rettig echoed that sentiment and admitted that it might be an unfortunate part of the narrative.

“There are a lot of folks that were using Hayward as a bedroom community and they found it more civilized to go over the hill to Pleasanton, Dublin or Walnut Creek to do their shopping,” she said reluctantly.

Stephen Gutierrez, Director of Creative Writing at CSU East Bay and a fiction author expressed grief at the thought of a landmark like the Book Shop becoming a thing of the past.
“I just hope that there will always be select readers who honor the book, because I think there is something great there.”