OXFORD, Miss. -- In the 1960s, when William Faulkner still walked the land, while Eudora Welty produced some of her finest work and Willie Morris moved "North Toward Home," their native state was known as a place where more people wrote books than read them.
Books in Mississippi were sold in pharmacies equipped with rotating racks featuring Mickey Spillane thrillers, or sometimes in department store nooks displaying Bibles and inspirational "literature."
But in recent years, a crop of small bookstores catering to serious readers grew up in the state, and Mississippi's independent booksellers find themselves in the middle of an escalating national feud with superstores such as Barnes & Noble, Borders and Books-A-Million.
After nurturing their shops into a profitable existence, local entrepreneurs in Mississippi and other points around the country are struggling against chain stores offering cheaper prices. As Richard Howorth, owner of Square Books in Oxford and president of the American Booksellers Association, says, "In 1991, when Barnes & Noble and Borders began to expand, there were 5,200 members of the ABA. Today, there are 3,300."
The plaint is a variation of the Wal-Mart syndrome: cut-rate behemoths drive mom-and-pop stores out of existence. But rather than return to the days before bookstores flourished, the independent booksellers are fighting back.
The ABA, which represents private bookstore owners, filed an antitrust suit against Barnes & Noble and Borders last March, charging the chains with undercutting the independent booksellers through "secret and illegal deals" with publishing houses.
By obtaining "disproportionate discounting and additional credit" unavailable to the independents, Howorth said, the chains are able to offer more attractive prices. For example, Tom Wolfe's new novel, "A Man in Full," listed at $28.95, sells for $20 at the superstores.
The situation was exacerbated last month by revelations that Barnes & Noble, the nation's biggest bookseller, planned to purchase the country's leading wholesale distributor, Ingram Book Group. (Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat sympathetic to the independents, has called for the Justice Department to investigate the antitrust implications of the merger.)
In an interview at his store overlooking the historic courthouse square that Faulkner immortalized, Howorth said that if the Barnes & Noble acquisition goes through, small booksellers who buy from Ingram would be faced with "the realistic threat of doing business with a company showing a desire to put everyone else out of business."
Since Square Books was established in 1979, the store has helped transform downtown Oxford from a rural outpost into a cosmopolitan center with a busy night life. The store is on the major league circuit for authors promoting new books. While reluctant to divulge his revenue, Howorth estimates that he sells average of six books per year for every man, woman and child in the town of 12,000 residents.
Yet the University of Mississippi here awarded Barnes & Noble a franchise for a campus bookstore a couple of years ago. "I felt betrayed by the university," Howorth said. As a result, he withheld Square Book's support for an annual book conference that draws many writers to Oxford each spring.
After it became apparent that the campus store concentrated on textbooks and had a minimal operation for "trade books," a designation for quality fiction and nonfiction, Howorth renewed his support for the conference this year.
Nevertheless, he said, "after years of growth, our sales have been flat since Barnes & Noble has been here. It's hard to say whether it's them or sales gravitating to Amazon.com," the Internet outlet involved in its own advertising war with Barnes & Noble's online "bookstore."
"The independents may someday have the opportunity to develop sales over the Internet, but not if we're obliterated from the retail face of the earth," Howorth said. He added: "All &L; corporate bookstores are, to one extent or another, predators."
Lemuria, a thriving independent bookstore in Jackson, Miss., has become a prime target for "predatory activity," says its proprietor, John Evans, who was frustrated by his inability to find good books in his hometown and started the store more than 20 years ago.
After outgrowing its original site, Lemuria is now in a handsome building just off an interstate highway. It is no coincidence, Evans says, that Books-A-Million, a Southeastern chain selling at cut-rate prices, set up a store across the interstate from Lemuria a few years ago. Or that Barnes & Noble recently opened its own store a couple of minutes away.
"What they try to do is to go and find a store to prey on," Evans said. "There's no way I can sell books at 40 percent off."
Lemuria is one of 26 plaintiffs in the action against Barnes & Noble and Borders. According to the independent booksellers' lawsuit, "the rapid growth of national chains, fueled by secret and illegal deals, threatens the survival of independent bookstores and the diversity of American bookselling."
Small-town enterprises such as Favorites Book Store, which sponsors readings for children and book-signing garden parties that have brought life to a neighborhood in Ocean Springs on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, are in jeopardy. Marilyn Lunceford, the store's owner, has told friends she fears her business will be ruined by a Barnes & Noble store projected for a new mall in nearby Gulfport.
Though the ABA suit was filed in California, which has state laws regarding unfair trade practices and serves as the home for a large number of independent booksellers, it has strong support from members in Mississippi.
Barnes & Noble and Borders formally responded to the suit in July by denying allegations of deal-making.
The litigation is still in preliminary stages, but Howorth said he was encouraged by a 1994 consent agreement involving the ABA, Penguin Books and other publishers. After the ABA complained about unfair trade practices, the publishers agreed to pay the booksellers $25 million.
Pub Date: 12/14/98