As in other cities around the world, the rise of e-books and other technologies has made life hard for bookstores in Barcelona, but some are surviving and thriving by reshaping themselves to draw more customers to a variety of activities.
In Barcelona, that’s particularly important because it’s a publishing center as well, home to the largest Spanish and Catalan book publishers. Among the added activities the stores have found to be lifesavers are cafes, meeting spaces, language classes, board game tournaments…anything to draw crowds.
One of the stores, +Bernat, actually moved to a larger space to accommodate all the activities. The owner, Montserrat Serrano, says it helps build “a lot of movement and you build customer loyalty,” but says it’s still hard to make money. “We struggle to balance the books. If anything unforeseen happens, everything wobbles.”
But so far, she’s avoided the fate of the 20% of Spain’s bookstores that closed between 2008 and 2013, including the iconic Catalonia bookstore in Barcelona.
Meanwhile, a similar trend toward more uses and more local connections has been happening in the U.S. After years of losing independent bookstores, the U.S. has seen a small trend, with over 600 new stores in the past few years, many of them in locations abandoned in the closing of Borders and the shrinking of Barnes & Noble.
