RiverRead Books, Binghamton, N.Y., will close at the end of January, the store announced.
Co-owner Constance Barnes told the Press & Sun Bulletin that declining sales, in large part because of online discounting by Amazon, led to the decision, saying, "We did feel very strongly that people would love to have this community center sort of a thing, and it just didn't go over as well as we expected."
A former Penguin rep, Barnes opened the store in 2008 with Patricia Hutchinson-Day and Jane Stuart-Andrus (Stuart-Andrus died of cancer in 2014). In its closing announcement, the store wrote in part, "Our plan was to offer a gathering place for all things literary and artsy, a place to share ideas and converse with the community. Well, we did just that... in eight years we held almost 900 events. Planning those events was important because we wanted to offer something for everyone. We wanted to highlight the very talented local authors, to give them a chance to share their words with those who might never have known about their books. We hosted monthly poetry open mikes, facilitated by the ever faithful J. Barrett Wolf, to whom we own a great debt of gratitude. We enjoyed hosting musicians once or twice a month for everyone's listening pleasure and we ALWAYS hosted a new visual artist every month. We designed the store with a gallery wall specifically for that purpose! We wanted people to drop in, browse the stacks, have a cup of coffee (or warm cider), ask some questions, compare notes and in general, share our enthusiasm for books. Due to limited space, we needed to curate carefully... to be sure to offer titles to cover all interests. And we established ourselves as the 'go to' place for ordering books."
When RiverRead Books opened, the surrounding downtown area was "pretty sad," but eventually it was "transformed with all of the new student housing and eateries and we are happy and proud to have been a part of that. Even though it didn't work out for us, we hope people will make an extra effort on behalf of all those who have taken a chance on downtown and support businesses, new and old, by spending their dollars locally."
In conclusion, the store wrote, "We will miss having the store and for that matter, the entire bookselling community, other booksellers, authors and publishing reps. But most of all, we will miss the people who came in regularly and visited with us. We will miss you each and every day."