Shop shows faith in bound volumes

BUY THE BOOK: Books on the Square Manager Jennifer Kandarian rings up Katherine Schoppel of Providence. The bookstore founded in 1992 is a brick-and-mortar survivor specializing in fiction and children’s books. / PBN FILE PHOTO/JAIME LOWE
BUY THE BOOK: Books on the Square Manager Jennifer Kandarian rings up Katherine Schoppel of Providence. The bookstore founded in 1992 is a brick-and-mortar survivor specializing in fiction and children’s books. / PBN FILE PHOTO/JAIME LOWE

There are businesses, even in the 21st-century United States, built on the sales of bound volumes of printed paper from shelves in old-fashioned, bricks-and-mortar shops.
They are now survivors of digital technology that sells books without them, or sells the words and thoughts they contain, book and paper free.
Books on the Square in Providence’s Wayland Square eluded oblivion in 2007, when current owners Rodney and Mercedes Clifton bought it out of receivership.
“There haven’t been a lot of changes, and that is a positive,” said Books on the Square store Manager Jennifer Doucette, when asked to reflect on the store over the years. “A big change probably would mean a lot of us wouldn’t be here.”
As it has been for more than 20 years, Books on the Square remains a general bookstore with a strong focus on fiction and children’s books. The store has a children’s specialist and most of the rear half of the store is dedicated to younger readers.
Readings from local authors, book signings and story times for kids are big parts of the weekly routine, as are providing personalized recommendations on what books are new, great or well-suited to each reader.
But that’s not to say nothing has changed at Books on the Square or that the business has totally resisted digital technology.
The store has a website and several years ago it deployed Google Books, a sales portal run by the Internet search giant.
Google took the bulk of each sale, and when it decided to stop working with independent bookstores, that experiment came to an end, Doucette said.
Books on the Square is changing its website to a new platform created by the American Booksellers Association this summer. Currently the site’s most active function is a form to order books, for in-store pickup.
Doucette said the store is watching partnerships some Boston bookstores have made with e-reader companies, such as Kobo, to see if that could be a potential fit.
Books on the Square was founded by Sarah Zacks, a book lover who worked at College Hill Books for a few years before opening her store, Doucette said.
Before the Internet, big chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble put many independent bookstores out of business, but Books on the Square endured and in 2002 opened a second downtown location at the corner of Empire and Washington Streets. But the larger economic forces pressing down on independent bookstores only deteriorated in the years ahead and on the eve of the recession in 2007, Zacks put the business in voluntary receivership.
Against the backdrop of independent stores closing across the country, the Cliftons’ offer to buy the bookstore may have saved it.
The couple’s primary motivation for buying the store was out of a love for reading, but saving the store came with the ancillary benefit of providing a job for their son, whose master’s degree in playwriting and library science were not lining up with employment opportunities.
They kept on Doucette as manager and most of the staff, which is roughly the same size as it was under Zacks.
“There was so much that was good about Books on the Square,” said Brown University engineering professor Rodney Clifton in an email. “We have tried to reach out to a broader community through out-of-store book sales at schools and civic events and through broader, statewide advertising. We have given the store a facelift with a new logo, new awnings, a dinosaur mural, movable book shelves and new folding chairs for events.”
Clifton said in the early years of his ownership the store lost money, but its bottom line has improved each year and is now breaking even.
Despite keeping the store mostly the same since buying it, Clifton expects there will be changes, which at a minimum will include more nonbook gifts to accompany the readable inventory.
“We will face stiff competition from online sales of electronic and physical books,” Clifton wrote. “Our expectation is that a substantial fraction of the reading public will continue to enjoy reading from a physical book and value the personal attention that they can get from a well-read staff in a neighborhood bookstore.”
As for what is popular now, Doucette said mysteries are hot, especially now during the summer.
And the books “Game of Thrones” is based on?
“They sold fairly well before, but since the television show, we can’t keep them in stock,” Doucette said. •

COMPANY PROFILE
Books on the Square
OWNERS: Rodney and Mercedes Clifton
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Bookstore
LOCATION: 471 Angell St., Providence
EMPLOYEES: 12
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1992
ANNUAL SALES: NA

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