As Christmas approached last year, it looked like there would be no need to puzzle over what killed the Mystery Bookstore at 1414 S. 13th St.
Kate Birkel’s 15-year-old specialty bookstore, which also has a cross-stitch needlework store attached called A Stitch in Crime, was so close to dead because of the ailing economy that she had notified her landlords and several longtime customers of the closing.
But her landlords, owners of the nearby Bohemian Cafe, gave Birkel a deal on the rent for a few months. That allowed her to cobble together a new business plan that has revived the store, one of only a few independently owned bookstores left in Omaha, at least for now.
The survival strategy included reducing the number of older books by popular authors, known as “backlist titles,” and increasing the emphasis on the needlework operation.
Initially, she said, “what I was trying to do was, instead of having 20 of the latest books by a certain author and no backlist, I’d have two or three and as much of the backlist as I could get.”
As Birkel reduces her inventory of older books, many of the backlist titles still on the shelves are scored with black magic marker, signifying they’re half-price.
“I can no longer afford to maintain a humongous stock of backlist titles. Now we have fewer copies and much tighter inventory control.”
Birkel still maintains a stock of specialty mystery presses, including publishers such as Rue Morgue and Felony & Mayhem that are hard to find at super-bookstores. And if business picks up, she hopes to eventually increase her backlist stock again.
“But in some respects, I’m starting over from scratch,” she said.
That’s nothing new for the store, which has been in several locations and existed in several incarnations since Birkel sublet the back wall of a used video game shop near 50th and G Streets in 1995.
From there, she moved to 16th and Vinton Streets, then to a cramped but evocative space on 13th Street.
Birkel has been in her current location, next door to her beloved Bohemian Cafe, since May 2008. Author-signing events always end with supper at the Bohemian.
The location is more open and airier than her former digs, and the bookstore and stitchery spaces are divided fairly evenly.
She added the cross-stitch shop in 2004, initially just to help sell off stock from a friend’s failed business.
“I just kind of kept it up. I’m a stitcher myself.”
A stitching group meets weekly at A Stitch in Crime, as Birkel also organized three monthly book discussion groups. One of the clubs, which meets at various restaurants, is called “Dinner and No Book.”
People so often came for the food without finishing the assigned book that Birkel decided to abandon the required reading.
“You don’t realize how important it is to have a certain hard-core half-dozen or so customers that you can depend on,” she said.
Although she always has been a mystery fan, Birkel said she considered specializing in science fiction when she contemplated opening a bookstore. But there already were two such stores in town with established clienteles, she said.
Birkel and the Mystery Bookstore have outlasted them both.
“I have the prime prerequisite for having my own bookstore,” she said, “a husband with a job and insurance.”
Contact the writer:
444-1074, john.keenan@owh.com
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