B. Dalton shutting doors

The final chapter for Yuba City's only seller of new books will be written within two months as the owner of B. Dalton Bookseller readies the closure of the chain's last 50 branches.

Managers at the B. Dalton store in the Yuba Sutter Mall have confirmed the bookstore's last day of business will be Jan. 16. The branch is one of the last remnants of the B. Dalton chain, which at its mid-1980s peak numbered 798 stores nationwide.

B. Dalton's closure is the third business departure announced in Yuba City in the past month. Blockbuster will shutter a video store on Stabler Lane Jan. 10, and the Pockets children's clothing store on Plumas Street is expected to close on New Year's Eve.

The closings show the urgency for Yuba City to prevent more retailers from fleeing, Mayor Kash Gill said Monday.

"We can't sit around and wait for businesses to come to us; we have to go to them," he said, adding that national retailers still hold Yuba City's size against it despite a decade of population growth. "It may not be the best time, but we want to get on their lists so when they expand their markets again, we can become their top priority."

To some local shoppers, online commerce and the recession's effects made B. Dalton's departure sad but almost inevitable.

"I think it's sad that you look around this area and there are so many store windows with nothing in there," said Heidi Young of Marysville as she emerged from a music store at the Yuba Sutter Mall. "We're losing a lot of shops to the economy, and people are afraid to spend because they might have a job today but not tomorrow."

Barnes & Noble Inc., which bought B. Dalton in 1987, announced last month it would wind down the entire division by January.

Comprising mostly small stores at indoor malls since its 1966 founding in suburban Minneapolis, B. Dalton has had its customer base steadily erode for two decades — first by the large books-and-coffee emporiums pioneered by its own parent company and Borders Group, then by the bottomless inventory of Amazon.com and online merchants.

Yuba City's only remaining bookstore is the Book House, a used-book outlet on Percy Avenue. According to Book House owner Jim Pennington, B. Dalton's two-decade decline illustrated the overriding reason book chains have struggled to survive — cost pressures from discount stores and wholesalers demanding larger and larger book purchases.

"When people came in and showed me a book they bought at Sam's Club, and I was having to discount my book (another) 10 percent to be able to sell it, I said to myself, no more," said Pennington, who ended new-book sales shortly after buying his shop 16 years ago.

The county libraries and the survival of independent Amicus Books in Marysville should soften the loss of book availability, said Cynthia Fontayne, a volunteer chairwoman of the Big Read literacy campaign at the Yuba and Sutter county libraries. But with more people leaning heavily on online book buying, she added, many less-popular titles and genres risk being ignored.

"There's nothing like a 'brick-and-mortar' bookstore to expose you to something you might never have sought out on your own," said Fontayne. "You could be looking for some title and there might be something just two syllables away that would command your attention, but it's never going to come up."

The absence of a large bookseller is among the retail gaps Yuba City should try to plug first, according to Darin Gale, economic development manager, who said a city survey of more than 700 shoppers placed books, electronics and natural-food groceries among the store types in highest demand.

That survey is the basis of a promotional drive the city plans to bring to national retailers starting next spring — possibly including Barnes & Noble itself, whom Gale hopes to convince to replace its small local bookstore with a full-size one.

"This is my opportunity to tell them, 'Look what you're missing,'" he said.

Contact Appeal reporter Howard Yune at 749-4708 or hyune@appealdemocrat.com