A Gibsons business owner has set her sights on the on-line retailer Amazon in her effort to preserve the town's last bookstore.
Since putting the business up for sale, Elle Conville said the only offers she received would see Coast Books close its doors permanently. Before next summer, she wants to show potential buyers that the community bookstore still has support in Gibsons.
"I have people who come in here and they'll say 'how do you make any money?' They live in Upper Gibsons and they say they can't be bothered to come down here and buy a book," Conville said.
Coast Books first opened its doors in 1973. Six years ago Conville purchased the business, but it has been during the last two years that her concerns have grown.
As digital options like e-readers and Amazon's front-door delivery gained popularity, fewer customers were making the trek to Lower Gibsons for books, Conville said.
"It's convenient for them, but I don't think people are thinking about the effect this is having on the whole community," she said, likening small businesses like hers to the glue that holds the area of Lower Gibsons together.
Her plan is to muster support from the community by convincing residents to buy one book every year, a strategy she said could also help other small businesses feeling the crunch of a slow economy and increased corporate consolidation.
In fact, Conville has a corporate background of her own. Twelve years ago she moved to the Coast from Vancouver, leaving behind a career managing mining companies.
Her first venture was to get into the hospitality business, running a country inn for five years.
When the bookstore came up for sale, she was encouraged by a love for the written word to make a go at the retail business.
Now that family commitments are impelling her to sell the shop, she hopes to find a buyer who intends to maintain the establishment rather than turn it into something else.
"You buy on the Internet, where does all that money go? It doesn't come back to our communities," she said. "It's a huge issue, it goes beyond my little book store."
