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Used bookstores turn to the Net By Sean Wolfe Ashland Daily Tidings Used bookstores often compare themselves to canaries in the economic coal mine. When they do well, so do boutiques, restaurants and cafes. And when they suffer, so does the rest of the city's street-level matrix. In Ashland, used booksellers make no secret of the fact that for them, winter marks the beginning of the slow season. Without the persistent and perennial cash infusion drawn in by the lure of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, many local used bookstores are forced to get by on lower sales, or look elsewhere for customers. "Make no mistake, this store is absolutely dependent on the tourist trade," notes Gene Chase, owner of Shakespeare and Co. books in Ashland. Chase has run the store for the past four years, and said winters are always tough. "Once the tourist season is over, if I didn't have to pay rent, I'd shut down. Even preseason picks up business a little. But there's no argument that we've been down this year over last year - and we're still down," Chase said. Chase admits that his shop is hard to find. Located off an alley next to the Varsity Theatre on Main Street, it's the kind of place that locals know about, but that tourists must make an effort to find. To make his store easier to find - and particularly his books - he's made the move to post his wares on the Internet, and so far the move has been kind to him. A number of Ashland-based bookstores, as well as independent booksellers who operate out of their garages, make a habit of searching outside the valley for more business. For most, it helps even out the seasonal cash flow, but for Chase, it's a lifeline. "Most times of the year, it's five to six percent of our business. This month, it's damn near half. I'm not doing much business in the store, so the Internet has been very good for us," Chase said. The Internet has also been good to Bookwagon owner Carl Hilton, who owns the store with his wife of 10 years, Kirsten Bakke. According to Hilton, Internet sales bring in 20 percent of his business during the year, but this month it fetches half of his sales. "The Internet helps even out the seasons. When it's dead in February, it's not as dead in other parts of the country," Hilton said. "The thing there is that the Net's all based on supply and demand. If there's a title where there's a huge supply, like the latest John Grisham novel, the book sells for $7.99 new, but the lowest used price would be a penny. Clearly, I'm not going to list books like that. On the other hand, it can be like Asimov's Guide to the Slide Rule. We could have let that sit on our shelves forever, but we put that online, and found that one guy who wants to use a sliderule, and it sold." Hilton is proud of his Internet sales. Having operated his store for just two years, he keeps a map in his office with pins in every country and state where he's shipped a book. Another issue that affects used bookstores in town is saturation. Ashland boasts a half-dozen used bookshops including the Book Exchange, Bookwagon, Blue Dragon, Shakespeare & Co., as well as Prospero's Fine Books - which specializes in rare and antiquarian tomes. These compete - at least on price - with local bookshops like Bloomsbury Books, Soundpeace, Treehouse and others. And all compete within the Rogue Valley with superstores like Barnes & Noble, as well as online sources like Portland-based Powell's, and nationally, with online superstores like Amazon.com and others. Bob Peterson, who owns the Blue Dragon Bookshop, said he is consistently amazed by the number of bookstores Ashland is capable of supporting - adding that he doesn't think the city has too many. "It's never too many as long as people can make a living," Peterson said. "When I went to school (with the American Booksellers Association) to learn how to run a bookstore, the idea was that a town of 15,000 people could support one bookstore. Ashland can support more because we have a big influx of summer tourists, and that distorts our population." But Peterson hasn't embraced the Internet to the same degree as rival stores. "I have a few books on the Net, mostly things I can't sell here - like Eastern Americana, or books that are just sitting around the store. Of all of the books in my store, none of them are on the Internet," Peterson said. Instead, Peterson relies on loyal customers to get him through the long winter, until the tourists return. "A huge number of my customers are Shakespeare fans. They set aside a few hundred dollars, and come up and spend it. "They buy books, see plays, do a river run, do a hike. For them, it's a package." 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