With electronic book sales through the roof, independent bookstores in Wisconsin are trying to stay competitive. Joe Gigliotti has the story.

Kristen Sandstrom manages the Apostle Islands Book Sellers Store in Bayfield. She says while the demand for electronic books, or e-books, has affected their traditional book sales, customer flow is still steady.

“We’d be lying if we said it hasn’t had an impact. We are very fortunate being in a small, tourism-based community in that we don’t really have a lot of competition in our area and there’s still a really loyal following of people who want the traditional book.”

According to the New York Times, about five hundred independent bookstores have closed their doors in the last ten years, due in part to the rise of e-books. But, Sandstrom says independent bookstores offer something special.

“We are a gathering place. We provide a service that is almost dying, ya know. People are so accustomed to going online to buy things, or they’re going to these big box stores to buy things, and we’re able to offer a service that isn’t really out there much anymore, and that’s a face-to-face conversation about books.”

Beverly Bauer is the Owner of the Red Berry Books store in Cable. She says her independent store had an outstanding summer, but some of their regulars aren’t so regular anymore. “Our sales are still growing, but I do know that there are some former customers that I don’t see so much anymore.”

Digital Reader dot com reports adult fiction and non-fiction e-book sales saw a 34 percent increase from the halfway point of 2012 compared to the same point in 2011, and a 251% e-book sales jump for children’s and young adult books. But Bauer says that doesn’t mean the end of hardcover books.

“Well, the mood among independent bookstores is really optimistic. E-books have been around long enough now that it’s sort of stabilizing and people are still reading books, and so I think the mood is that the death of a printed book and independent bookstores is premature. I do think that there’s room for both in the world. The people that we see in the store are still in love with what we think of as the perfect technology, which is a book that has pages in it that you turn (laughs).”

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