The growing popularity of electronic books for portable tablet computers or e-readers is impacting independent booksellers here, those in the industry say, although Auntie's Bookstore in downtown Spokane is one outlet embracing the technology.

Other booksellers here say they hold a niche that caters to people looking for discounts on print titles, or to customers who want that classic in hand. Some operators add, however, that they're still adjusting to the digital reality.

Deborah Brooks, manager of 2nd Look Books, on Spokane's South Hill, says increased use among consumers of e-books has affected how that business prices and stocks its 70,000 titles of used books. Its employees who research pricing closely have seen book values come down in recent years, she says, and the business has had to limit trade-in days to three per week when customers bring in books for credit toward purchases.

"For us, it's yet another competitive force out there, so we have to figure that in when we're doing our pricing in particular," says Brooks, who adds that another factor is a shorter cycle between when a title's hardback version and the paperback version debut. "Prices in the book industry are constantly changing—a lot faster than it did in the past."

She adds, "E-readers, as far as sellers go, they make everything available immediately, so our prices and what we offer has to be very appealing to our customers."

2nd Look Books, located on two levels at 2829 E. 29th, also has readjusted how many traded-in copies it takes in order to stock certain best-sellers, because they're so readily available in digital form.

"We don't always accept things we would have in the past because there isn't as much demand, such as mysteries," Brooks says. "A lot of people are accessing them through their e-readers."

She adds, "What's working for us is people still really like to have the tangible product in their hands. For a lot of people, classics are what they want in their library, so we've upped the ante as far as the quality of classics we have in."

Monkeyboy Books owner Jerry Thrift also focuses on classics with an inventory of 15,000 used, rare, and out-of-print books in the Atrium Building, at 123 S. Wall, downtown.

"Used books are always going to have a niche, because they're looked at more along the lines as antiques now," he says. "They look nice in your home; a book says something about who you are."

He contends that the real battlefield is among bookstores that carry large inventories of new releases and classics that have lost copyright protection and are now available online for free.

"The stores selling the brand new releases, they're the ones battling it out with the e-reader, I think," he adds.

Auntie's carries about 90,000 titles for traditional print options at its 402 W. Main location and at a River Park Square satellite space, but it offers e-book sales as well, says manager Melissa Opel.

Auntie's began offering classes this year on digital downloading and has instruction sheets on how to get the e-books purchased through its website to work on a majority of devices, with the exception of Seattle-based Amazon.com's proprietary Kindle e-readers, Opel adds.

"My e-book sales are not what I'd want them to be," Opel says, estimating them at 1 percent of Auntie's business sales. "Part of it is Amazon has created a false realization that they're the cheapest people to download e-books from, but all the major publishers have set the price for e-books and they're non-discountable."

She adds, "Having said that, Amazon is going through the process of getting exclusive contracts with some authors and slowly trying to get into bed with different publishing companies, and Amazon is getting into the print business, too."

In the past two years, some independent bookstores such as Auntie's have collectively boosted their online retail options through a New York-based trade group, American Booksellers Association, which has more than 1,900 store members in the U.S. The association provides the selling of Google eBooks through individual member stores' websites. The group also offers an IndieBound Reader mobile app to member websites for reading e-books on smartphones and tablets.

However, Opel says Amazon continues to dominate the market for e-book sales and has formatted its Kindle e-readers to "read" only digital material downloaded from its site. At least so far, Amazon's newer multifunction tablet computer called Kindle Fire allows for a "side-loading" option if e-books are bought from other retailers for those devices, she says.

Opel says a bigger challenge is making customers aware that Auntie's offers e-books as a consumer choice when so many think first of buying digital material from Amazon, which reported last year that its online retail sales of electronic books surpassed sales of printed books.

Another Spokane store with a smaller book inventory is tinkering with its approach to literature sales. Tinman Gallery and an adjacent children's bookstore, Tinman Too, in the Garland business district on Spokane's North Side, carries between 2,000 and 3,000 titles between the two stores, says owner Susan Bradley.

Although she primarily focuses on art gallery items, Bradley says she has always carried contemporary literature, art books, and children's titles, but she has noticed a recent shift because of e-readers. Bradley says her store is a member of the booksellers association and the regional chapter, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association.

"We've been talking for at least four years about how independents can sell e-books, and even before that they were leading the way in how to sell books online," Bradley says about the membership groups. "Now the e-book challenge is, of course, a much bigger one."

Bradley describes one consumer example of how her business lost out to digital convenience.

"One of my best customers was one of my book club members, and she'd buy books every time she traveled, which was two or three times a year," Bradley says. "She'd come and buy half a dozen at a time, and a lot of them were hardbacks. She bought a Kindle because she was tired of lugging the books around, and I've literally not seen her for two years."

It's become a reality for children as well, Bradley says.

"I've run into moms who are reading to their kids off of tablets and e-books," she says. "It's amazing to us because it's exactly opposite what book reading has been as children grow up as a way of bonding with your child. They think of it as another gadget."

Bradley says she has considered selling e-books through the ABA and her website, but it so far would be too expensive. She says the fee is $250 a month to use software required to offer e-book sales.

"I'd have to pay a monthly fee as well as probably getting some other software and re-doing my website to do it right," she says. "I'd have to add more staff because of customer service. I'd have to sell 75 e-books a month to pay for being able to sell e-books, and that doesn't cover staff and overhead. I'm too small, which also means I have to seriously rethink my business model to consider whether I'm going to continue selling books."

Some of the readjusting she's done so far is to hold monthly events around authors' visits or book anniversaries that draw people to the store as a gathering place.

Smaller bookstores aren't the only ones grappling with major shifts in the book industry and online competition. Big-box retailer Borders Books & Music last year filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy and eventually closed all of its U.S. outlets, including one here on the North Side and another in Coeur d'Alene. Waldenbooks, which was owned by Border Group Inc., closed a Spokane Valley Mall outlet in 2009.

The Inland Northwest still has its share of larger stores that sell books. These include outlets of New-York based Barnes & Noble, which has its Nook e-reader, and of the Amarillo, Texas-based Hastings Entertainment Inc., which also stocks other entertainment products. Today, consumers have many more choices where to buy books, in addition to online, but also at such retail outlets as Costco, Walmart, and area grocery stores.

Brooks adds, "Everyone sells books now. You can go to Rosauers, and there are best-sellers."

Bradley says that some people are beginning to browse bookstores more for ideas than purchases.

"We're becoming showrooms for selling books in online stores," she says. "People come in and they're writing their list down so they can go back and buy it online."

However, Bradley adds that some independent bookstores are doing well in urban centers because they're marketing themselves both as gathering places and for their book knowledge.

"The staff reads all the time," Bradley says. "They're doing a lot of social media and a lot of in-store events. They're becoming gathering places."

Auntie's, which hosts about three events weekly, has employees who have worked at the bookstore for 30 years and offer their collective literature knowledge, Opel says. "We know more about books because we're not just focusing on best-sellers," she adds. "We know them from decades ago."

Monkeyboy's Jerry Thrift says he sees e-books as having a good overall impact on the industry. "The good thing is people are getting their books at a touch of their fingertips really quickly," he says. "That ease creates more readers, and younger readers as well who are more apt to become lifelong readers, and eventually they'll want to access books."