After selling medical books in Houston for 53 years, Majors Books will close next month.
A local institution, the Texas Medical Center-area store has found it increasingly hard to compete with online booksellers, said owner Al McClendon, who works at the company’s Dallas headquarters.
Majors’ 100-year-old parent company will continue to sell books to the Houston medical community through its Web site, he said.
“It was a really tough decision we had to make,” said McClendon, a third-generation owner.
The store will close Jan. 30.
The Houston and Dallas Majors stores are among the largest medical bookstores in the U.S. Business at his Dallas store has also declined, but it will stay open because it is also home to the online operation, McClendon said.
Online bookstores have cut into his stores’ revenues significantly, he said.
Over the past decade or so, there has also been a shift in the way medical schools teach, said McClendon, who noted that there is far more medical information and research available free online.
The Houston Majors store is no longer turning a profit, McClendon said.
“Our future is on the Web,” he said. “We’re beginning to get more students coming to our site as opposed to walking in.”
Over the years Majors Books has done business with Houston area medical students and Texas Medical Center institutions.
Last summer, McClendon said, he came up with an idea to save the 10,000-square-foot Houston store: Reduce its size and lease the rest of the space. Majors owns the property.
But renovation costs were prohibitive, McClendon said.
There is a human toll to the closing, and not just for employees.
Upset customer
One customer, Jason Torres, is distraught.
The Dickinson resident has been a Majors regular for five years. His 10-year-old daughter B’elanna Torres has cerebral palsy, and he goes to the store to look for books to help her, he said.
Majors has “dramatically increased her quality of life,” said Torres, a Medical Center technician. From reading books he bought there, he has been able to make several helpful recommendations to her doctors, he said.
For example, he learned of a muscle relaxant that no doctor had told him about and later convinced a doctor to prescribe it. The muscle relaxant has enabled his daughter to have freer movements and a better range of motion, Torres said.
“She holds herself better now …. and can support herself even on her weak side, all because of what I learned from the books I bought at Majors,” Torres said. “This store and staff are special.”
Majors has an Internet site, Torres said, “but it’s not going to replace coming in here.
“Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m looking for until I get here.”
Another longtime specialty bookstore in town is having a tough go of it.
Founded in 1946, Brown Book Shop downtown is “not doing well,” owner Pat Ginther said.
The store, which specializes in engineering books, was late in developing an effective online presence, Ginther said. Recently, the store launched a much improved Web site and he’s hoping that it will make a difference.
If not, Ginther said, Brown could go out of business in a year.
“Bookselling has always been a highly competitive business, even more so today with the growth of Amazon and other online sellers,” said Oren Teicher, CEO of the American Booksellers Association, a trade group.
“Stores that feature harder-to-find specialty titles have been hit even harder because their products are more readily available,” Teicher said.
However, growing numbers of consumers understand that supporting locally owned independent businesses is good for their local economy, “and many independent bookstores are figuring out how to compete and stay in business,” he said.
Local staffers at Majors say they are sad that it is closing.
It seems “really strange” that a city with a world-renowned medical center can’t support a medical bookstore, said Meina Brink, store supervisor at the Houston Majors location.
Small campus bookstores
Majors has also faced competition from Houston medical schools that have small campus bookstores. However, campus bookstores function mainly to provide students with textbooks and do not serve as year-round full-service bookstores like Majors, said Roger Torres, manager of the Houston Majors store.
Majors Books was founded 100 years ago by McClendon’s grandfather Dr. J.A. Majors.
The Houston Majors opened on South Main near Dryden in 1956 and moved to 7205 Fannin, at the southern tip of the Medical Center, in 1994.
Majors has six employees in its Houston store, compared with 16 staffers a decade ago.
