Bookstores

There was an Irish wake Sunday with white wine instead of whiskey and an open microphone in lieu of a coffin at Dutton's bookstore in Brentwood. The business, long considered the ground floor of the city's literary scene, is scheduled to close April 30, but owner Doug Dutton held an early party Sunday to say goodbye to his loyal customers and staff.

John Strange, who has been browsing downtown Long Beach's Acres of Books for about two decades, said the best way to shop the store's 1 million new and used books is to pretend you're a big-game hunter. "Take a helmet and a sandwich and you can go hunting all afternoon," said Strange, 58. "You can either get overwhelmed and intimidated or you could just jump in." But the days of literary expeditions at the store's 12,000-square-foot building on Long Beach Boulevard are apparently numbered.

In an era of Amazon.com and chain bookstores, where a good read is a click or neighborhood mall away, Melody Peck drove more than 100 miles from San Diego to downtown Long Beach to walk Friday among the dusty stacks at Acres of Books, her favorite bookstore, one last time. After 74 years in business, the independent bookstore giant with an inventory that topped 1 million volumes is closing down to make way for a redevelopment project.

For the Dutton clan, well-respected fixtures of the Los Angeles bookselling world, the last year has been a series of unfortunate events. Dutton's Books and Art on Laurel Canyon Boulevard closed last spring after almost half a century when Davis Dutton left for Washington state. Then, at the end of 2006, Dutton's Beverly Hills shut its doors because of a disagreement over finances with the city, which had lured owner Doug Dutton, Davis Dutton's brother, to the site after a long courtship.

At his independent bookstore in this famously left-leaning town, Neil Coonerty offers bestsellers from both sides of the political spectrum. But there's freedom in owning your own shop: You can make fun of those you don't like. Over three decades, the 60-year-old former Berkeley radical has skewered his share of conservative authors and politicians -- along with others whose ideas he didn't think were worth the paper they were printed on.

FIVE years ago, Gary Frank decided to sell his bookstore here. The Booksmith had built a fine reputation over a quarter of a century, thanks to an impressive series of author appearances and a high-traffic location in the old hippie neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury. Yet hardly anyone expressed interest. Frank was disappointed but not surprised. "Maybe they saw the future," he said.

Christy Coyne recently opened a second location of her Orange County children's bookstore, the First Page, and she's already working on the next chapter of what she hopes will be an ongoing business success story. The plotline has her creating an e-commerce site by April and selling her first two franchises by September. She'll also finalize contracts with three employees that she wants to turn into partners, which will give them ownership stakes in the growing operation.

A sluggish book market and intense competition from rivals such as Amazon.com and Costco Wholesale Corp. are forcing the nation's top two booksellers -- Barnes & Noble Inc. and Borders Group Inc. -- to rewrite the rules on the book business. Their challenges were revealed as both merchants reported disappointing fourth-quarter results Thursday.

All this was before--before Adler Alley had been rechristened Kerouac, before the Condor Club tossed its kitschy sign (complete with stripper Carol Doda's flashing red pasties) and long before anyone, anywhere, would have the temerity to open a "Beat Museum."

THE often-parroted line is that indie bookstores are DOA in the 21st century, fallen victim to the formidable onslaught of Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com and continued reader apathy. And the statistics on the ground would seem to confirm that thesis, considering the recent closures of Angeleno institutions such as Dutton's North Hollywood, the blink-and-you-missed-it Dutton's Beverly Hills and the possible uprooting of the Brentwood Dutton's store.