The bookselling industry was in disarray when Alice Meyer opened Beaverdale Books 10 years ago. Roughly 60 percent of the nation’s independent bookstores had folded during the previous 15 years. In fact, the month after Meyer opened her 1,000-square-foot store in the Beaverdale Shopping Center, Big Table Books in Ames shut its doors after 14 years.

Digital readers were capturing ever-larger shares of the publishing market, and independent stores were under pressure from the discounts offered by industry giants Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

But Meyer was not dissuaded. And it’s a good thing, because 10 years later the industry is growing again, with stores like hers leading the way. The American Booksellers Association reports that its membership, as well as the number of stores its members operate, has grown every year since 2009 when 1,401 members operated 1,651 stores. Today, the group has 1,775 members with 2,311 stores.

“New stores are opening, established stores are finding new owners, and a new generation is coming into the business,” said Meg Smith, a spokeswoman for American Booksellers. 

Meyer is the prototype new owner, said Carrie Obry of the Midwest Booksellers Association, a regional affiliate of the national group. 

“Alice is positive and open-minded and tries new things,” Obry said, including targeted mailings and author events. Booksellers, like local foods and artisans, are benefiting from the shop local movement, she added. Beaverdale Books opened with 6,500 titles in 2006 and now carries 9,400. While Meyer won’t reveal sales figures, she says the business has been an evolving process.

Meyer got the idea to open a store in the early 2000s while working as a community development officer for the state of Iowa. She enjoyed visiting independent bookstores when she traveled and said a newspaper article in the late 1990s piqued her interest. (The article was about The Book Store, a Des Moines institution since 1961, which closed two years ago following a fire at the Equitable Building.) 

Meyer did research and attended a weeklong Bookselling School in Denver. The U.S. Small Business Administration helped her develop a plan. 

She opened Beaverdale Books in July 2006 with help from friends and volunteers while she was still working for the state. Four years later when she turned 60, Meyer accepted a buyout from the state and focused full time on the store. Her store’s strengths include its large selection of children’s books and Meyer’s promotion of Iowa authors, about 400 of whom have books on her shelves today. 

“Iowa authors started coming in the day we opened,” Meyer said, asking for help promoting their books. “We weren’t prepared for it. It started with one shelf, then a bookcase, then a section.”

Today, Iowa authors command an entire wall, 42 shelves. Des Moines native Bill Bryson has his own shelf, while there are 15 shelves of fiction by Iowa authors and nine shelves of nonfiction, along with sections for Iowans’ memoirs, poetry, music and cookbooks.

Bryson and Des Moines author Jim Autry, whose books provide business and inspirational advice, are Meyer’s two best-selling Iowa authors, while her most popular new Iowa book is “Water,” Jennifer Wilson’s novel that explores Iowa’s looming water crisis.

“Alice and her book shop are really important,” said Simpson College’s William Friedricks, who has written five books about Iowa business history and who advises the University of Iowa Press, which last year published “Equal Before the Law: How Iowa Led the Nation to Marriage Equality.” 

“She not only carries the books, she knows the books,” Friedricks said.