Further to our post about [In the] REDgroup a few days ago, here is a report from the Financial Times (UK). There's no real surprise about this - people like to spend time in a shop that has lots of interesting things to discover and staffed by knowledgeable people, they don't like spending time in supermarkets with a predictable range of merchandise and when the staff is apathetic and ignorant.
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Amid the plethora of fashion stores that opened their doors last month at One New Change, the City of London's new shopping mall, there was one retailer that stood out.
A small Foyles bookshop rubs shoulders with the titans of the British high street, including Next, Topshop and Marks and Spencer.
The presence of Foyles and of a new branch of Daunt Books across the road on Cheapside, underscores the relative health of a select group of independent booksellers.
That contrasts with a broader picture for large book chains that is increasingly grim, pushing Borders into administration last year, and sending full-year like-for-like sales at Waterstones down 6 per cent.
Foyles benefited from the desire by Land Securities, the landlord at One New Change, to bring in stores that would lure more weekend visitors.
"Land Securities wanted to make this a destination because the City tends to go dead over the weekend," said Sam Husain, chief executive of Foyles.
Finding a location with low enough rent to accommodate the slim margins of booksellers has always been a challenge. But in the case of One New Change, a bookshop helps to increase 'dwell time' in the mall, justifying what David Atcherley-Symes, retail manager at Land Securities, confirms were "favourable terms".
Rents have fallen in the recession, making it economical again to run a book shop.
"When the retail world as a whole was booming it was extremely difficult to find sites, because the multiple retailers were in grabbing everything," said James Daunt, the ex-banker and founder of the Daunt Books chain, which now has seven branches.
"If I came up against Next, the landlord will always choose Next. Now that they're not we've had more opportunities and have opened up a succession of shops recently and have been able to do so in prime positions."
Yet independent booksellers are adamant that there is more to their success than securing cheap rents. They cite the attractiveness of being able to offer a selection of often overlooked titles and creating a more consistent experience than the larger chains.
"There's no need for us to juxtapose [glamour model] Jordan's latest with a serious biography of Sigmund Warburg," said Mr Daunt.
"But that is quite likely to happen in some of our larger competitors, simply because the publisher of one book bought the store space next to the publisher of the other and that makes them less appealing places to be in."
Patrick Neale of Jaffé and Neale, the independent bookstore in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, agrees.
"There are still thousands of beautiful books that people don't know about and if we work hard to stuff them under their noses, and are really excited about the product, then hopefully they will respond by opening their wallets," he said.
Price competition from the internet and the supermarkets is still shrinking the number of independent booksellers, however.
The recession is also taking its toll on a business that was once considered immune to the economic cycle.
"I've been in bookselling for 20 years now and we were always told that books were recession proof," said Mr Neale.
"We've held up okay but it's been a tough recession. According to the statistics, the book market is down about 3 per cent nationally, but compared with DVDs and computer games that's not so bad. There are probably easier ways to make money, but I love books."
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