An Independent Bookstore Struggles to Survive

You often hear about the difficulties that independent booksellers face. Here's a story that brings it into sharp focus. There's no single one factor - chain stores hurt the new business, Internet buying put pressure on the used titles, a major store leaving the shopping center dropped traffic, and a rent increase to start in September may be just the last straw for Diablo Books. The owner of the shopping center, Regency Centers, hasn't been commenting to the press and apparently refuses to reconsider the increase, even though it's not delivering on the necessary anchor store to help attract customers for all the stores. Now there's sense - demand an increase, probably because you couldn't manage to keep a big store in the space, drive out existing businesses, and then make no rent at all. Sometimes you have to wonder whether business managers ever learned basic arithmetic.