Even many of the general interest bookstores have a key group of specialties. These specialty stores often include other products besides books. At Pastimes History Store in Amherst, for example, books dominate the shelves, but history buffs can also buy antique replica maps of area towns, model kits of colonial houses, historically accurate toys and so forth. With all this activity, the Pioneer Valley is a book lover's Eden. But despite this amazing concentration of independent retailing, some owners are not sanguine about their prospects.
People are smart, interested in all sorts of topical, intellectual, cultural things.
It's a pleasure to be a bookstore in a town with a customer base like that. We had some good years in the '80s. We expanded, hired more people, stocked more books. But because of the dip in the economy in the early '90s, an expansion of the corporate chain bookstores and the expansion of independent bookstores in this community, it's been very difficult. The pie is the same size, the population hasn't grown.