Independent Bookstore Opens in Burnsville

Christine Olson has taken an unusual course: Her online bookstore, BooksMN, is expanding from the virtual world to bricks-and-mortar reality.

In mid-October, Olson opened up a storefront on County Road 42.

“It’s kind of reverse to trend,” said Olson, president of BooksMN.

Olson founded BooksMN in 2002 as an online-only enterprise, selling remainder and overstock books—retail returns, warehouse pulls and surplus copies of books that have gone through multiple editions. Online sales remain her bread and butter: Over 95 percent of her business takes place on the Internet. However, she said, the market is flooded, challenging her to keep up with competitors and maintain a profit.

“We used to sell everything we listed by great margins. But the online business is tough,” Olson said. "If you’re not cheaper by a penny, you’re not going to get the sale.”

For Olson, books run in the blood. Her father owned and managed several overstock bookstores in St. Paul and Minneapolis, and Olson was in her 20s when she began working in the family's bookshops. Together, she and her father competed with big box booksellers and transitioned the company into the Internet age.

"It's kind of funny that I've opened a store," Olson recalled. "In the late 1990s, I was begging my father to close his shops and go online only."

After 10 years, she gave up the business and became a full-time mom, but found that the bookselling industry was a hard habit to break.

“I just could not stop ordering books,” Olson said.

Most of Olson's online customers are one-time buyers, though they come from all over the country and the world. Olson decided that maybe it was time to test the waters in her own backyard, in the hopes that she could develop a loyal following in Burnsville and her home city, Savage.

While there's been no industry reversal in e-commerce, it can make sense to run bookstores online and off, said Meg Zelickson Smith, a spokesperson for the American Booksellers Association.

"It's all very dependent on the situation. There's no grand trend that can be drawn," Smith said. "You need to provide as many ways for their customers to buy books as possible. It's an integral part of being a bookstore now. I don't think you can decouple the two."

Smith did say that smaller stores are enoying an edge over larger-scale competitors in tough economic times: They have lower operational costs and more flexibility than a 20,000 square-foot mega-retailer.

In her small shop next to , Olson sells not just paperbacks and hardcovers, but journals, stationery, games, toys, DVDs and gifts. But she keeps a lot of shelf space and a soft place in her heart for each slim volume in stock.

"Our booksellers are doing lot of creative things, offering a variety of inventory like toys, clothes, you name it," Smith said. "They're doing everything they can to keep the bookstore alive."