"Frankly, we are losing the battle against on-line shopping, big box discounters, increasing rents, and a half-empty street," the owners of Village Books, an independent bookstore in Pacific Palisades, warn. Feeling down to the wire, they've decided to lure customers back into the store with a holiday sale, knocking 15 percent off everything in the store for the first weekend of December.

As the comparable situation at the Eso Won bookstore in South Central reveals, though, it's going to take more than a bunch of shoppers making a single visit to turn the problem around. Just as a local bookstore needs to prove its value to the community, so too the community will have to demonstrate its commitment to the bookstore.