By Julie Bosman
Published New York Times: August 16, 2010
Battle of the independents: Books & Books opened in July on Main Street in Westhampton Beach, N.Y., around the corner from the new location of the Open Book.
WESTHAMPTON BEACH, N.Y. — Ever since Books & Books opened its doors on Main Street here last month, it has missed out on some of the adulation usually reserved for new independent bookstores in the age of Amazon.
Several storeowners nearby have ordered their staffs not to shop there. Indignant older women have marched inside the bookstore to yell at employees. And someone, or perhaps several someones, may have sneakily placed used chewing gum between the pages of new books.
The animosity seems to have stemmed from the fact that Books & Books moved in when there was already an independent bookstore, the Open Book, around the corner. And as some people saw it, there was no room for another one.
Terry Lucas, a librarian and the owner of the Open Book, which she founded in 1999, said Books & Books is on a course to put her already struggling store out of business.
The dueling bookstores have caused a bit of summer drama in this quiet, laid-back town on the south fork of Long Island, where much of the commercial activity happens on Main Street, a tidy stretch lined with restaurants, real estate offices and boutiques.
“You’d think the thing that was going to kill the little town bookstore was the e-reader,” said Glenn Dorskind, a high school English teacher and friend of Ms. Lucas’s. “But the thing that’s killing it is another bookstore.”
Not that there is anything wrong with Books & Books, the challenger in this David-versus-slightly-bigger-David story. It occupies a sleek, 2,000-square-foot space with spotlessly modern décor, gleaming track lighting and tastefully arranged shelves of best sellers, poetry volumes and children’s picture books. Even its opponents, some of whom have gone inside or peeked through the enormous front windows, have grudgingly admitted that it is a beautiful place.
“There’s no legal or ethical principle that says you don’t open a second store of some kind because someone else has the first one,” said James Kramon, a longtime summer resident here.
Jack McKeown, one of the owners of Books & Books, said he believed — and the statistical research that he had conducted clearly showed — that there was plenty of room for another bookstore in Westhampton Beach. “We have been subjected to some pretty unfair treatment by a very small minority of people,” he said. “My attitude is to take the high road here and not engage in any of this. I’m not even going to get engaged.”
On a recent Saturday afternoon, his store attracted a steady stream of shoppers, who browsed new releases by Julie Orringer, Martin Amis and Nelson DeMille. Mr. McKeown said that he had been “much busier than we even anticipated” and that the store — which is independently owned but affiliated with the Books & Books stores in South Florida and Grand Cayman — had lined up a busy calendar of author events this month, the peak of the summer season.
The Open Book, a smaller, cozy shop about a dozen storefronts away, sells many of the same books at the same prices, along with a few toys, aromatherapy candles and writing journals.
The rest at NYT.
And coverage of the same story at The New York Observer.
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