Indie bookstores and Barnes & Noble find common ground

Independent bookstores continue to bounce back.

The American Booksellers Association told The Associated Press on Tuesday that trade group membership grew over the past year from 1,757 to 1,835, and the actual number of store locations from 2,321 to 2,470. In the first four months of 2018, sales from the roughly 650 to 750 independent stores reporting numbers have increased more than 5 percent from the same time the year before, according to CEO Oren Teicher of the American Booksellers Association.

In 2009, the ABA had just 1,401 members and 1,651 stores, and had shrunk by two-thirds since the beginning of the 1990s, when membership topped 5,000.