“We had business from different states we had never seen before,” said Alyson Jones Turner, who owns the store with her mother, Janet Webster Jones.
“Our being able to walk now has a lot to do with that moment.”.
Allison K. Hill, the chief executive of the American Booksellers Association, said the group surveyed its 1,750 members in July and received responses from about 400 of them.
Of those who answered, about a third said their sales were down 40 percent or more for the year.
But another 26 percent said their sales were flat, or even up.
The organization plans to do another survey in January, and Ms. Hill said she expects that positive number to have eroded.
Even at stores where sales have held on, profits are often down, Ms. Hill said. »
