Greenville's great independent bookstore - The Open Book - is closing its doors. Shopping at your local independents has never been more important!

Greenville's great independent bookstore The Open Book is closing its doors.

The importance of supporting local independent businesses can't be emphasized enough.

After four decades in business in Greenville, The Open Book is closing.

The independent bookstore first opened in August 1971, in what was then the Bell Tower Shopping Center, now County Square, long before the era of large national chain bookstores, big-box retailers selling books at deeply discounted prices or online book sales.

Tom Gower at age 48 left a successful corporate job to become a bookstore owner. He went on to make the Gower name "synonymous with local bookselling," as a Greenville Piedmont newspaper story put it in 1987. The Open Book has remained a locally owned family business to this day.

Through the decades, the bookstore attracted and kept devoted customers like Anne Howson and her husband, Art. "We have relied on Duff for at least 25 years to make recommendations" about what to read, Howson said Saturday. Every Christmas, Howson's husband would call for suggestions for the five or six books he always gives his wife. When he came to the store later, Bruce would have a list ready. Howson said she was sad to learn the bookstore is closing, "but not at all surprised. I know what a struggle this has been (to keep it going). It's been a labor of love for them." For her, "It's more than just a business closing its doors." A sense of community will be lost.

The year The Open Book consolidated, in 1993, there were about 4,700 independent bookstores in the United States, according to the American Booksellers Association, The New York Times reported. By 2007, there were about 2,500.

The plight of the independents was portrayed in the 1998 film, "You've Got Mail."

The independent bookstore The Happy Bookseller in Columbia, founded in 1974, closed in 2008.

But the Bruces said a combination of factors beyond large chain bookstores, some of which are also feeling pressure, have made it tough for independents. For example, some big-box retailers and online booksellers discount books to below cost, Bruce said. In October, the American Booksellers Association sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice asking for an investigation of the price war between Amazon.com, Wal-Mart and Target.

When the store closes, the book clubs, writers groups and nonprofit boards that meet in The Open Book's back room will have to find another place. Some schools will have to seek another advertiser for their yearbooks and another donor. A small pool of local businesses, such as office suppliers, will be in need of another client. And local starting-out authors, as Nicholas Sparks was at one time, will have to look for another spot willing to host a signing for someone not yet widely known.

Howson, a librarian as well as a longtime customer, said, "It goes beyond economics. It makes me sad to think that to save a few dollars we give up so much more."