Let’s say you’re a small, independent bookseller that unfortunately happens to be down the street from some giant megastore chain that offers deep discounts on the same books you’re trying to sell at full retail price. You’re probably out of luck and better off opening a hot dog stand, right? Well, maybe not. I just read an article about such a case in England.

Linghams is an independent bookstore in Wirral, England, located across the road from mega supermarket and retail chain Tesco. Tesco sells new releases at steeply discounted prices, and Linghams’ sales were negatively impacted by the competition. After reading an article about Tesco CEO Sir Terry Leahy in which Leahy indicated he felt bad about wiping out small businesses, Linghams manager Eleanor Davies contacted Leahy. Davies explained how the discounted books were affecting sales at Linghams but also noted that Linghams was a specialty bookseller and thus offered a different service than Tesco. Leahy suggested that Tesco could send customers over to Linghams if they were unable to find the desired books at Tesco. Guess what? It worked! The Tesco near Linghams began displaying signs pointing customers to visit Linghams if they needed a broader or more specialized book selection.

It’s nice that the voice of the independent bookseller was heard, but this will probably not become a trend. Still, it can’t hurt to ask, since if you don’t ask, the answer is always “no.”

Back in July Merge Records celebrated its 20th anniversary as an independent record label. Harper Studio noted the occasion and suggested that book publishers might learn something from Merge’s success. Here’s the background on this remarkable indie project, as given by NPR.

Merge was founded in 1989 in Chapell Hill, North Carolina, by Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance (of the band Superchunk) with the purpose of documenting and making more broadly available the fruits of their own vibrant local music scene.

Rather than wedding itself to a single sound, or searching for musical star power, the label has built a catalog around its own eclectic, but somehow coherent, aesthetic. As a result of their careful, curatorial approach, Merge has earned the trust of likeminded music fans, radio DJs, and critics, who are likely to take notice of a new record simply because it is put out by Merge.

Merge markets frugally and counsels their artists about maintaining realistic expectations. “It doesn’t always make bands happy to be told, ‘We expect your record to sell 2,000 copies, and that’s the way we’re going to market it,’” Ballance admits.  But the upside of this realism, it seems, is greater creative freedom for the artists. Recalling his beginnings with Merge, Britt Daniel, the lead singer for Spoon (which has become one of Merge’s most successful bands), explained, “They were OK with us putting out records that didn’t have the expectation or requirement to be anything other than a good record . . . it wasn’t necessary that we sold 100,000 records for them to turn a profit.”

What interests me is how Merge seems to be challenging the common wisdom that, for a record label (or a book publisher), brand identity is not important. Also, in their core philosophy—that they are simply music fans putting out records for other music fans—Merge seems to offer an early prototype of the kind of niche community that many are hailing as the future of book publishing. As McCaughan put it, “We started a label, and we run a label counting on there being people like us.”

Every day it seems another independent bookseller goes out of business. You can blame the economy, Amazon.com, the Internet, or maybe your neighbor, but the facts remain—stores are closing, and people aren’t buying as many books as they used to.

Some booksellers, however, are putting up a fight. Village Books, an independent bookseller in Bellingham, Washington, has embraced technology and plans to offer customers high-tech options in addition to traditional paper books. The store has partnered with Symtio to provide audiobooks and ebooks. Customers will purchase a book in the form of a product card at the store; the card then allows them to download the book wherever they have an Internet connection.

Village Books will also be home to an Espresso Book Machine. The EBM is a print-on-demand book-making machine. Not only can customers purchase, print, and bind out-of-print books but they can also create self-published books. Village Books is banking on the belief that there will be demand for out-of-print local books. There are only a handful of EBMs in retail stores across the nation.

Wednesday night I had nothing better to do than to eat a light dinner—Gouda with cumin, mâche with tomato—and to read a short book I just bought, Insoupçonnable (Beyond Suspicion) by Tanguy Viel, a thriller about family deceit in the south of France. But before doing that, it seemed like a good idea to shut off my illuminating little seducer.

That’s when I saw the news, a bleak tweet stuffed in its 140-character jacket.

 QuartetPress  I truly hate being the bearer of bad news, but it has to be announced: Quartet Press has disbanded. http://bit.ly/17zUsS_about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

How can I explain my reaction? It was something like a heavy object and a thud. And suddenly gone were all thoughts of family intrigue in the south of France. I had a real death to consider.

There was, however, one problem.

I didn’t know anyone personally at Quartet Press. I just thought I did, sort of, in an Internet way. Quartet Press was an ebook publisher recently started with great fanfare and confidence, its little Windows-like flag flying bravely into the new world of publishing. But it didn’t last long enough to publish a single book.

So why did I care?

Quartet Press was to publish romance novels, a project far from our own. They were going to focus on ebooks, while we will be offering both paper and electronic options. But I admired the enthusiasm of its site, its clear desire to do something new, its courage. And, I guess, in the mysterious way the Internet, or a book, makes you believe in what you can’t see, I was seduced by the drama of another new publisher.

Only yesterday morning did I learn the cause of death: higher than expected editorial and technological costs. Kat Meyer, one of the quartet heading the press, said, “The financial risk was increased beyond what our financial backer was able to accept, and the only options we had were to close or to regroup and go forward without financing,”

So adieu, Quartet Press, onetime maker of digitized, illuminated colors on my screen. I’ll miss you, whoever you were.

But no need to imagine. Here is a video of the Nice book festival, including scenes of the sea, a market, writers signing books, even a socialist union demonstration. It was filmed by Valérie Bonnier, a French actress turned novelist. 

How is the book business in France? Well, consider these numbers. France, with a population of 65 million people, has 3,500 independent bookstores. The United States, with 300 million people, has 2,200. France not only has more independent bookstores but, per capita, tops the United States seven to one.

Why? One reason might be France’s “prix unique du livre,” which allows publishers (or in the case of foreign books, importers) to set book prices. Thus, an independent bookstore in a small street in Paris has the same prices as Amazon.com. A maximum 5 percent discount is allowed.

France is not alone. Twelve other countries in Europe have fixed book prices. Switzerland, which had abandoned fixed prices, took the first step toward reinstating them this year.

Their strong points have always been personal service, informed recommendations, browsing of real books . . . But now, emerging on the fringes of the book world, might be a new weapon for independents, as well as bookstore chains, in their battle with Amazon.

Meet the Espresso Book Machine.

Browse a screen for book titles, read a few pages of a book, and click. The machine will print out a copy of the book in front of your eyes. You think Amazon’s two-day delivery is great? Try instant gratification.

Although not all books are available on it, more will be coming soon. Here is a video about Angus & Robertson of Australia, the first retail chain in the world to adopt the Espresso Book Machine.

In Manchester Center, Vermont, the Northshire Bookstore recently became the first independent bookstore in the United States to have an Espresso Book Machine.

Imagine the independent bookstore of the future. Walk in and browse through shelves of real books. Talk with sellers who know publishing and can suggest titles you would never have found on your own. Still can’t find a physical book to buy? Step up to the Espresso Book Machine, view virtually every book known to humankind, and click.

Amazon, now seemingly unstoppable, is dependent upon an antiquated and environmentally questionable distribution system: trucking books to warehouses, sending packages through the mail. In a world connected by wires and wirelessly, it’s hard to see how that system will survive capitalism’s unforgiving drive toward lower costs.

COS has experienced exponential growth since 2006 (12 projects that year, according to the Times; 140 in 2008).  Their services are tailored to a wide range of budgets, from the bargain basement “Cover Story” (the only image is your book cover) for $300, to the “Platinum Teaser” (special titling, effects, photoshop scenes) for $2,500.  (To shoot an author interview, or a full blown trailer with a script and live actors, call for a quote.)  For a taste of the drama and intrigue that COS can create in a 36-second “Level 2 Mini Teaser” ($1,500), check out what they’ve done with Baited (2006), a romance novel by Crystal Green.  (Or for a more literary interpretation of the book video, see what Harper Collins did for Rivka Galchen’s critically acclaimed Atmospheric Disturbances [2008].)

Meanwhile, many authors on shoestring budgets are embracing the guerrilla marketing spirit, posting homemade book videos on YouTube, MySpace, their own websites, and elsewhere online. 

And why not bookstores? Green Apple Books of San Francisco, one of the best-loved independents in the Bay Area, is creating an atmosphere all its own with videos to promote its Book-of-the-Month recommendations. Created “in the lo-fi style” by SF-based French Press Films, these videos feature scruffy-looking but enthusiastic staff members hamming it up in testimonials, “dramatizations,” and “reenactments” related to the featured book. Can videos like these drive foot traffic to Green Apple or increase sales?  Green Apple Commercial #1:  Book of the Month!  (in which staff bolster their endorsement of David Benioff’s City of Thieves with a money-back guarantee) has been viewed nearly 1,200 times since it was posted in June 2008—although the only comment it has inspired (or provoked) is “dorks!”  Still, the videos have some infectious appeal, and they’re getting more sophisticated.  Their latest effort, Green Apple Commercial #7:  Conquest of the Useless!, shot “on location” with bookseller Stephen Sparks doing his best Werner Herzog,  is my favorite: