It left us very quietly. The redoubtable John L. Smith of the Review-Journal mentioned in a May 4 column that the Albion Book Company was closing, and within that first week of May, it did. We were not halfway through the year, and already the graveyard of old-school businesses was filling up—The Hilltop House and Cooler Lounge are the others that closed recently. But the shuttering of Albion cut us a little deeper for some reason.
It wasn’t as if Albion arrived in town with the contrived splendor of a Steve Wynn casino implosion. But for literature geeks, when Mike Burdo opened his bookstore in early 1990, in a small strip mall off Desert Inn and Eastern, it was a mad rush akin to teenagers rallying around the television sets to watch the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. In short, we had a refuge. It seems like a lifetime ago, but before the Internet boom and the arrival of megastores like Borders and Barnes & Noble in the mid-’90s, Albion was our one salvation in the Valley. And what a store it was:
“His stuff was just good,” says Ann DeVere, owner of Plaza Books. “Such a variety of classic literature, like Hemingway and Dickens, but also old magazines and sheet music. He touched on a wide range of things and it kept the interest level for the shopper up.
”But 18 months ago, Burdo sold his business to Mike Hoover, of Los Angeles, who gave Albion the subtitle “If Books Could Kill”—and found himself struggling to keep the business alive soon after. As early as the spring of ’06, rumors began that Hoover’s Albion was closing for good because Hoover would leave for weeks and just cover the windows with black crepe paper, with no sign as to his whereabouts.
“I would get all these calls from people asking what was going on,” says Linda Piediscalzi of Dead Poet Books. “I would eventually catch up with him and ask what was going on ... He didn’t understand all the fuss and actually said that his customers don’t mind. But I told him they do mind, or why else would I and the other booksellers in town be getting all these calls while you’re off on holiday in Hawaii? Seriously, he couldn’t let anyone watch his store while he was gone?
”Calls to Hoover for this story were not returned.
Another problem, some booksellers speculate, is that Albion became too narrow in its scope, specializing in mystery novels and ignoring an overriding breadth of catalog.
“You have to find a meeting ground between your love of books and having sharp business acumen,” Piediscalzi says.
Miko Montgomery of Moviebrat says, “You really need to keep your options open in this game. I have a jazz background, and there would be nothing more that I’d love to do than push jazz onto people, but that wouldn’t be wise ...
“[Instead] I have some posters and books regarding hip-hop artists. Now, I’m not a fan of hip-hop, but I realize I have to make some concessions in this business and think beyond your immediate tastes.
”But used booksellers agree that the biggest change in their industry comes from people purchasing rare books online. Several websites, such as Alibris, Amazon, Abebooks, Half.com and others have succeeded because there’s infinite shelf space on the web, so customers can search far and wide for an exclusive title. And selling online cuts out the middleman—which is what used booksellers are.
“The bottom line is that Joe Blow can be a bookseller, so he doesn’t need to take his stuff to us,” says Piediscalzi. “That’s the biggest drawback I see with online sales—the good books just don’t come by our way anymore.
”Another hindrance to used-book sales, particularly in Las Vegas, is one that people don’t like to shout out: This isn’t a city for the literati.
As Montgomery of Moviebrat puts it, “When people shop at my store, they can’t help but feel my own excitement about movies, books and poster art. But I don’t often feel that level of excitement in return. And I have to remind myself that this isn’t New York, San Francisco or Paris. This is Vegas. Vegas doesn’t get excited about cultural things. This town was never intended to appeal to anyone’s sense of culture. Vegas culture is Ultimate Fighting, the Pimp and Ho Ball and the Adult Video Awards.
”Perhaps the biggest surprise is that the closing of Albion has only enhanced the camaraderie of the other used booksellers and strengthened their resolve.
“We have to rely on each other and let people know there’s still a need for us,” Piediscalzi says. “You can’t get the serendipitous joy of finding an old cookbook with wacky recipes if you don’t know about them. That’s something you don’t get from online shopping.
”According to DeVere, “Used bookstores are places where you find books you forgot you wanted. And seriously, for true book lovers, there has to be shared sense of joy of communicating with people about literature, and I want to extend that joy. If I have a customer who’s looking for a title I don’t have, I’ll gladly recommend them to another seller. It’s about keeping the idea alive that there’s a network of us out there to use.
”As for Albion, its story is almost over. According to a spokeswoman at Weingarten Realty, Albion’s landlords, its future is up in the air. After Hoover missed a few months of rent, an arrangement could not be worked out, and Weingarten handed the situation over to an outside legal company. The options: a new store-owner will take over the merchandise, or they will try to sell the inventory off to other booksellers, or the public library might step in and raid the contents. Nobody will know the outcome until next month.