Press Release————————————————————– After twenty seven years, during which Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop was repeatedly voted the best or among the best used bookstores in the Boston area, owner Vincent McCaffrey has announced his plan to close the Newbury Street store with a pre-Christmas half-price sale and move the remaining stock to a new location.

The decision follows three years of declining revenue and increasing costs. Income at the store has been cut by more than a third due to the extraordinary growth of internet book sales. This has come at a time when the City of Boston has repeatedly increased taxes while real estate values have driven rents to all time highs.

When Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop opened in 1975, the last few blocks of Newbury Street had few retail businesses. The first three years were lean as buyers were slowly drawn to the location by poetry readings and literary stunts. In 1980 noted author Harlan Ellison sat in the bookshop window for three days and wrote three stories as passersby gawked. During the 1980’s small boutique stores flourished, creating the ‘Newbury Street’ image as a hot retail district.

Beginning Thursday, October 24th, most of the stock of the store will be sold at half price. About 10% of the volumes are cataloged for internet sale and because of this increased cost will be set aside at a lesser discount. This means over 130,000 books will be offered for sale at 50% off.

Used bookstores do not enjoy the turnover common to new bookstores, because of the need to carry a much larger selection of stock. An average used title requires as much as two years to sell compared to two or three months for a new book. The Avenue Victor Hugo stock of 150,000 books and 250,000 back issue magazines requires a significant amount of space.

The largest component of Avenue Victor Hugo’s customer base has been students. With the common issuance of laptop computers and the steady increase in the online book market, student habits have changed. This has coupled with the extraordinary rise in textbook prices at a time when production costs have fallen, primarily due to a reduction of the number of publishers competing in a very large market.

Students, once on-line and looking for bargains in the used text book world, order most or all of their books at one time. When shipping and handling is figured into the equation, they often pay a little more, but save the time and work necessary to go scouting in actual bookshops.

This summer’s tourist season has been another disappointment. Visitors from small towns lacking their own used bookshops no longer have to wait until they ‘visit the big city,’ to search for titles; simply going on the internet instead.

Suburban book lovers have been driven from more frequent Newbury Street visits by voracious parking enforcement with high penalties and the lack of parking in the first place. The decline in the quality of public transportation and parking fines have often been cited by disgruntled customers.

Book collectors will happily spend time ‘surfing the net’ in search of the best deal. Mom and pop with their Mac on a table top in Tennessee can now compete, selling the books they picked up at their local library sale at prices which reflect the lack of overhead costs to bargain conscious buyers. The number of used booksellers nationally, which remained for years at about 10,000, has now risen to the hundreds of thousands on the internet.

Specialty book dealers, once a primary source of income for Avenue Victor Hugo, because it followed a practice of keeping its prices as low as possible, are now saving the hundreds of hours and transportation costs once spent searching for difficult titles in the aisles of far flung shops.

Reading habits have dramatically changed through the years, with buyers all seeking the same titles of books which have received mass promotion through venues like Oprah’s Book Club. Chain stores can easily out-discount smaller stores in competition over fewer titles.

National chains, incorporated in low tax states and using the advantage of large purchases and the power of big advertising budgets have had a negative impact on many small businesses, including bookshops. Avenue Victor Hugo had already reduced its new book purchases from twenty percent of its total mix to zero in the face of increasing competition from chains like Barnes and Noble and Borders. Barnes and Noble and Amazon have now both aggressively entered the on-line competition for used book business.

The rent at the bookshop has traditionally been kept below average Newbury Street prices by their sympathetic landlord, but recent increases have been unavoidable in the present market. City assessments have increased taxes on Newbury Street commercial property each year since 1996.

Despite the increase in taxes, services in the area have decreased in recent years. Graffiti, street garbage, and aggressive panhandling have made the street far less attractive to visitors. Petty crime has grown as police enforcement has been directed to high profile problems.

Another important loss has been the already significant change in neighboring businesses. Besides the onslaught of retail chains, Newbury street has become a hot market for shoe stores and hair salons. This is a narrow market which is seldom interested in browsing dusty bookshelves.

The bookshop’s two cats over the years, Tygg Feet and Blue Bart, have usually had more fans than the overworked staff. Blue will miss his sunny window spot where his adoring public currently makes homage.

The store weathered two previous recessions and Mr. McCaffrey had hoped to hang on a bit longer. “Being rather near sighted has kept me close to my business through the years and helped me ignore the changes.” But it is clearly time to go, he says. The bookshop is currently looking for a new home as close to the present address as possible. The avenuevictorhugobooks.com web site will remain active through the move in January. The 50% off pre-Christmas sale will hopefully reduce stock to a manageable size before the move.

During the move, customers may go to the Avenue Victor Hugo web site (where 15,000 books are catalogued) for additional information and new developments at: avenuevictorhugobooks.com

For more information please contact Vincent McCaffrey, Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop, 339 Newbury Street, Boston, MA 02115. Telephone 617 266 7746. e-mail: [email protected]