As customers listened to the strains of Bob Dylan and browsed the black shelves of Book Soup in West Hollywood, bookstore fans wondered about the future of this hip independent bookstore.
"I don't like the news that all of these great independent bookstores are going bye-bye," said David Armstrong, a New Yorker who was shopping Sunday at Book Soup during a business trip to Los Angeles.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday, October 16, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 1 inches; 53 words Type of Material: Correction
Book Soup: An article in Business on Monday about plans by Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena to buy Book Soup in West Hollywood misspelled the name of Vroman's President Allison Hill as Allison Hills. It also misidentified Book Soup's Tyson Cornell. He is the bookstore's director of marketing and publicity, not its general manager.
The concern followed news that Vroman's bookstore in Pasadena has signed an agreement to purchase Book Soup, which its founder, Glenn Goldman, put on the market shortly before he died of pancreatic cancer in January.
Customers' worries were exacerbated by the continuing struggle independents have in a world of giant bookstore chains and online sellers.
Tyson Cornell, Book Soup's general manager, declined to comment on the impending sale. But like most of his customers, he worried that a new owner would change the atmosphere and guiding principles of the store.
The store is special, Cornell said Sunday, because of its unique selection of books and its knowledgeable staff, composed mostly of aspiring authors and screenwriters.
"I'm very concerned that things will change," he added.
Allison Hills, president of Vroman's, said the company intended to keep Goldman's legacy alive by preserving the name and direction that made the store famous.
"The hope is that the transition is invisible to customers," Hills said. "Book Soup will continue. Vroman's will just provide the behind-the-scenes, operational infrastructure to keep it going."
In 1975, Goldman was enrolled in UCLA's graduate school of management when he put together $50,000 in start-up funds for a small bookstore on Sunset Boulevard. The first few years were tough, with Goldman forced to live in the back of the store to keep the business alive. In the late 1980s, he moved the store to its current location on Sunset near Holloway Drive.
In 2002, Goldman launched a second bookshop with a coffee bar at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. But the venture closed five years later, a victim of high rents and stiff competition from online booksellers and chain bookstores. Book Soup has since become a landmark in West Hollywood, offering more than 60,000 titles in a labyrinth of tall, black shelves.
Indeed, that competition from online retailers such as Amazon.com and big chains such as Barnes & Noble Inc. has continued to hit small retail booksellers hard. And the deep recession that began in December 2007 has added to the burden on independent stores.
