Struggling used book store adds products

In order to stay afloat in a struggling market, local used book store owner Joe Grant has decided to expand his inventory to compete with other retailers, primarily retailers offering electronic alternatives.

“If I could download it, print it off and save a hundred bucks, I would do it,” said Joe Grant, owner of Academic Scholarly Books.

Grant said his business, located at 105 Pete Ellis Drive in the College Mall area, has slowed during the last few years because of the popularity of e-books and online textbooks. E-readers are devices like the Kindle or Nook that display digital copies of books, or e-books, on the screen.

“Things were slowing down with the economy and e-books,” Grant said.

In addition to used books, Grant recently started selling board games, puzzles and DVDs in order to stay in business.

“It’s been going pretty well for me,” Grant said.

The small shop, crammed with books on topics like philosophy, politics and foreign language, is open from noon to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. The store’s entire inventory is also online. Grant uses the physical location of the store to buy books from students.

“I’m always open to students who want to trade in their books,” Grant said.
Unlike the IU bookstore, which has buy-back windows at the end of the semester, Grant buys academic and scholarly books all year.

Grant also tries to carry a slightly different inventory than the campus bookstore. He said many of his customers appreciate the hard-to-find books he carries.

“I try to stock stuff you can’t find at the campus bookstore,” Grant said. “I’m geared towards the serious student, the grad student.”

Grant generally doesn’t carry fiction but carries a few pieces of classic literature used in IU courses.

This year, the Pew Research Center reported a sharp increase in e-reader ownership during the previous holiday season. From mid-December to mid-January, e-reader ownership jumped from 10 percent to 19 percent of adults in the United States; yet in the period before the holiday, ownership barely increased.  

Despite the spike, Grant thinks scholars might stick to paper books.

“It seems like the scholarly people want a copy to underline,” Grant said.

He has never had an e-reader himself but tries to ask people if they like them.
Grant said his business has improved since he added DVDs and games, but the success has been slow-coming.

“I wouldn’t say a spike,” said Grant, who has been in a retail location for five years but in the book-selling business for 10.

“Brick-and-mortar stores are closing all the time,” Grant said.

While his store is doing well now, due in part to the new inventory, Grant predicts for the longevity of other independent book stores, “it’s a matter of years” before bookstores shut their doors.