An online independent book store is winding down sales, with its founder saying the future of small businesses like hers “isn’t looking particularly bright”.
Mandy Myles announced the closure of her retail website Bookety Book Books yesterday, citing ongoing economic pressures, changing consumer habits and increasing competition.
Wānaka-based Myles founded Bookety Book Books in 2020, deciding on the move during the first Covid-19 lockdown.
Speaking to the Herald, she said her decision was partly driven by the economic climate – but new technologies and global competition had also been making retail difficult.
“Historically, Aotearoa has been somewhat protected from the level of discounting seen overseas because it has always been a difficult market to achieve scale in,” she said.
“But over the last few years, that has changed.”
Myles said strategies from competitors like Amazon have helped normalise “aggressive discounting” in the book industry, with readers’ expectations evolving in response.
And while the rise in audiobooks and e-books gave great open access to books, Myles said it was difficult to keep pace as a one-woman business.
“It is ultimately up to consumers to decide which businesses they want to support and see survive,” Myles said.
“That’s an incredibly difficult choice in the current economic climate.”
Myles noted online-only bookselling was different from a bricks-and-mortar approach, given it lacked the advantages of foot traffic, convenience, customer loyalty, impulse purchasing and physical space.
“The reality is that when you search for Bookety Book Books alongside a book title, you will often be shown advertisements for the same book elsewhere at a price close to – or sometimes even below – what I can buy it from publishers for.
“It just feels like no matter how hard you work, you’re always trying to catch up.”
Myles said it had been a difficult decision but she was confident she’d made the right choice, and had shared her reasoning to educate readers about operating a small business in the “highly competitive” industry.
Myles now planned to pivot Bookety Book Books away from retail, to focus on the growth of the community she’d built and bringing like-minded readers closer to content and each other.
“Our next step is to expand on all of this through a dedicated website, with better functionality than just our Instagram, where we can champion authors, bookstores, books, reviews, events and community, while creating even more opportunities for readers to connect with one another,” Myles said.
“I think there is a real opportunity online to keep reading accessible, fun, and joyful.”
Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.