The Book Table, Oak Park, Ill., which announced in August that it would be closing this year after more than two decades in business, will officially shut down sometime around Christmas, WBBM Newsradio reported.
The good news for Oak Park's soon-to-open indie Dandelion Bookshop (see above) is that Book Table's co-owner Rachel Weaver said the decision was a personal one and that business is fine: "We're all doing our thing. We know Amazon has taken a bunch of cream off the top; we know Barnes & Noble is starting to open up stores again in the city, but really we've reached a point where we know what our market share is, and we're all pretty happily coinciding."
Co-owner Jason Smith added: "As long as you're creating some sort of unique experience with highly curated books, and you have a staff that is there to recommend them--which is always going to be better than an online algorithm... it just doesn't matter whatever it is that Amazon is doing."