The last large independent in Fort Worth, Tex., Barber's Bookstore Inc., has liquidated its inventory and closed.
The liquidation included 70,000 books, mostly used books on Texicana and western American history. Most of these titles have been purchased by author and bookseller Larry McMurtry and will be priced at $30-$75 each at his Archer City, Tex., store, Booked Up.
McMurtry has been gradually converting the business district of his home town, Archer City, 30 miles south of Wichita Falls, into a "book town" modeled after the Welsh book town of Hay-On-Wye, according to Larry Swindell, book editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Barber's Bookstore was originally established in 1925 and its contents were sold by the store's third owner, Brian Perkins, a former CPA who acquired Barber's in 1960.
Perkins's store was located in downtown Fort Worth, which has been much lauded for its celebrated conversion into an entertainment, dining and retail district, called Sundance Square, sponsored by the development interests of local business scions the Bass Brothers. (McMurtry's removal of this substantial stock of old books was spurred by his recent visit to be a panel member at a film festival held in Sundance Square.) Several years ago, a huge Barnes &Noble store was built in the Sundance Square district. Recently, the city's daily newspaper was acquired by Knight-Ridder, which links the newspaper's online editorial content to the Barnes &Noble Web site.
Barnes &Noble is ubiquitous in Fort Worth, where it has two huge stores within several miles of each other. Recently its dollar-clearance inventory of remainders, formerly displayed on tables in high traffic areas of the downtown store, was cleared to make room for Christmas merchandise. At a local library sale in early November, a substantial sprinkling of the stock consisted of remainders marked with Barnes &Noble's clearance stickers.
Perkins had seen the handwriting on the wall for about 15 years, and tried to survive by specializing in regional, military and other antiquarian categories. "I kept buying more and more books, to the point where I couldn't turn around in here," he said in the store recently. "That's probably what did me in."He had a much easier time acquiring books than reselling them. Over the years, his store had became increasingly difficult to navigate, with many books housed in rooms, nooks and crannies that were designated off-limits to browsers. Sometimes potential buyers would be discouraged because the books hadn't been priced yet.
McMurtry's facility in Archer City, a small town about 120 miles northwest of Fort Worth, currently consists of four buildings near the county courthouse. He recalled buying his first secondhand book at Barber's in 1954.
"I had ridden the bus to Fort Worth for a track meet, and went into Barber's and bought Hugh Walpole's Rogue of Herries on the second floor," he told PW.
The purchase of Barber's inventory, for which he won't disclose the price, is one of his biggest, McMurtry said. In the past year he bought 700 boxes of books from a store in Paradise Valley, Ariz., and 850 boxes of books from a dealer in New York State. Barber's inventory will consist of about 3000 boxes of books.
McMurtry shelves about 25 boxes of books daily in Archer City, and to keep up that pace, all are not categorized immediately. "I always will have serendipity, but it's 85% better than it was a year ago," he said. "It's boring to have everything categorized.
"The reason I have a book town is because of my belief that the only way you can have a half a million books is in a small town," explained the master storyteller and observer of human foibles. "I've seen the death of almost every secondhand bookstore in the big cities. Secondhand books will never keep up with urban real estate values."
To give an idea of how much the Barber's purchase will increment McMurtry's stock, the entire purchase would fill one of his four buildings if it were transferred intact.
Fort Worth will not lack for secondhand books. Half Price Books, a Dallas-based chain, sends a truck to Archer City periodically to pick up all the books McMurtry buys but d s not shelve. The Fort Worth-Dallas area has a number of Half Price Books outlets, which means a good portion of the Barber's stock could make a round trip to Archer City and back to Fort Worth, with the prices dropping precipitously in the process. McMurtry's Booked Up bookstore sells few books for less than $10, in keeping with its "rare and fine" marketing approach, while Half Price, specializing in remainders and used books, sells many books for $5 and less.
