May 5, 2006
Keep It Well-Lighted!
We can't take any more of this Bay Area independent bookstore stress -- first the Kepler's drama and now this? Venerated SF independent bookstore stalwart A Clean Well-Lighted Place For Books is on the market. Owner Neal Sofman says that it's been hard getting walk-in traffic at its Opera Plaza location and that sales have been steadily declining over the years. But what about that new Peet's that just opened next door? Surely that would help?
In fact, Sofman just sold CWLPB's brilliant domain name (bookstore.com) last month to an undisclosed party, for an undisclosed amount. (That would explain why we couldn't pull up any bookstore-specific information about Caroline Paul's reading two days ago for the Wednesdays column.)
Sofman is opening a new bookstore in West Portal, but emphasizes that it isn't going to be anything like Clean Well-Lighted: "It's a small neighborhood bookstore."
We're so sad! We love Clean Well-Lighted's book selection, remainders, and readings -- plus, we're only like two books away from redeeming our frequent buyers' card. Please let someone cool buy the place!
Picture from Steve Rhodes's Flickr account; Rhodes notes that he didn't take the picture.
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Yes, we're so sad. So we hope someone buys it. However, I'm happy to have a good bookstore open in West Portal (sort of my neighborhood), to go along with the used bookstore! Between Cine Arts taking over the movie theater, a great new Indian restaurant, an awesome little market and Peet's and Plain Jane's, West Portal is really looking up these days.
Whether anyone buys the store or not, my question is why would anyone want to go in business with a guy who's last book store just went under? How does one get a new group of investors to put up money with what appears to be a big risk? And if the store opens, I'd still check out the used book store on West Portal to see if they have the books I want, for less, and if they didn't, unless Sofman can match the price at Amazon, I'd be hard pressed to buy retail from him....the whole thing sounds dicey, at best, and the Chron article brings up a heck of a lot more questions than it answers...
I'm with you W. Portal Denizen - there are a lot of questions there.
If he had the capital to open a new store in West Portal, why is he hurting? It sounds like a partner dispute - his partners wanted him to buy them out, he says he doesn't have the money.
Maybe he sees W. Portal's future foot traffic growing and Opera Plaza's shrinking. It's really strange that he sold the domain name so quickly and suddenly - why not try to transfer it to another domain before selling?