Grand Terrace Book Store Joins National Trend

Eileen Garza looks around her store and sees shelves and shelves of books.

The one thing she hasn't seen as much of lately is customers.

So, the owner of Terrace Books will close her doors Sunday after seven years.

She's in good company, as Borders bookstores will begin a liquidation of its assets after a judge approved its bankruptcy plan Thursday.

But where Borders has been a retailer of everything from books to movies to music, Terrace Books was a store that had held onto its neighborhood roots.

"Back when we had regular hours, we'd have customers in here just standing around talking about books," Garza said. "It really had that old-fashioned, small town feel."

Garza bought Terrace Books in 2004, after it had been opened in its current location on Barton Road in Grand Terrace in 2001. She had no allusions of becoming rich, but she just liked books.

The shop focused on re-selling copies best-selling, mass-market paperbacks. Garza said she used to sell more hardbacks and non-fiction, but her customers' preference was the best-selling suspense and mystery stories that are easily digestable in paperback.

Many customers would buy books, then after a while, return with some books and sell them back to Garza for store credit for their next round of books.

But as the economy soured, her store's four walls weren't nearly as necessary as they had been in the past.

"I had started putting the overstock online," Garza said of her Amazon.com store. "Just the non-fiction books at first. Then more and more of the pop fiction. Now it just costs more for the store space to house them, when I can make a couple of bucks on shipping."

The rise of the affordable e-reader also may have cut into her business. But Garza, who said she owned a Kindle, said that there should be room for both.

"The one thing is, you can't break a book," she said, adding she had broken her first Kindle. "I used it for hard-back books and non-fiction books. But to make it seem like the Kindle is better (as some of the product's recent commercials tout), bothers me.

"But the whole concept is to keep people reading. Anything that gets people to read is beneficial."

Garza is trying to sell off as much of her inventory before closing her doors for good. She will be having a bag sale Saturday and Sunday, giving customers a chance to fill a small bag for $5 and a larger, grocery-store sized brown bag for $10.

Terrace Books is located at 22310 Barton Road, Suite D, in Grand Terrace. The store will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. both days.