Elsewhere Books' Survival No Mystery; It's Fiction

photo: Maureen McGettigan

Elsewhere Books owner Amy Beasom shares a laugh with customer Harvey Brady at the Judah Street store.

By Ryder Miller

Boasting newly-painted fantasy signs by local artist Jeff Petersen and selling second-hand and collectable books of fiction, Elsewhere Books has been riding out the economic recession.

By doing so, Elsewhere Books is battling a trend that has forced other bookstores to close.

"Rent went through the roof and a lot of bookstores went out of business," said Amy Beasom, owner of Elsewhere Books.

"In the last eight years the book business has slowly been collapsing onto the Internet," said Gerald Webb, owner of nearby Arkadyan Books, which sells Antiquarian books. "The Internet decimated this business. Few people are filling in collections."

With an unusual schedule (Wednesday ' Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.), and its off-the-beaten-path location at 260 Judah St., Elsewhere Books depends upon collectors of fiction.

"I don't sell to casual foot traffic," Beasom said. "I have to sell collectables or I wouldn't be here. Too many stores are selling new titles. All my books are used."

Beasom expects customers this summer to be looking for fantasy titles based on recent blockbuster films, such as Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings.

"A lot of adults read Harry Potter. Movies sometimes have the ability to generate readership," Beasom said.

Beasom, who has owned the store for 26 years, can recount some of the trends in "genre fiction (science fiction, fantasy, horror and detective)."

Having "read the entire spectrum," Beasom says science fiction has "gone now to very high tech stuff - nano-tech computers and theories in physics and astronomy."

A new crop of science fiction writers started creating a different type of horror in the early '90s, with human monsters, serial killers and vampires.

"Anne Rice stretched the limits of the more Dracula-like people," said Beasom. "She brought it out of the closet."

Small stores face the impact of a bad economy first, Beasom said. Her customer base has expanded because of a new crop of young people whom she has introduced to older authors.

Beasom said those who have been in demand in mystery include the hard-boiled "Black Mask" authors, like James Cain and staples like Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, Cornell Woolrich and William Irish.

For science fiction, she recommends Phillip Dick, Jack Vance and luminaries Asimov, Clarke, Herbert and Heinlein, and H.P. Lovecraft.

Genre fiction has been impacted by Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, where Beasom said she could see some traces of post-Sept. 11 paranoia. Mystery publications have also been affected, with more terrorists emerging in political and spy thrillers.

New trends in publishing are the E-Book and computer-generated literature, which can be downloaded.

Beasom originally feared booksellers would go out of business because of the Internet, but that did not happen because many people and "hackers" did not pay for information.

"Reading a long time on the computer will give you a headache," Beasom said.

Beasom explained how and why readers fall into collecting. "They will say, 'I'm not a collector, I am just a reader.' But if there is interest in a subject or author, they may need to buy collectables to get the information they want. All readers are potential collectors," Beasom said.

Seventy five percent of Elsewhere Book's books are collector copies and only 25 percent of her titles are secondhand.

Webb points out that Beasom has carved out a niche.

"There are only a few people like her and myself and when we die off there won't be anyone," Webb said. "The world moves on. Like the change from horses to cars. It is an irreversible process."

For more information about Elsewhere Books, call 661-2535.