By the time that Michael Sito heard The Globe Bookstore and Coffeehouse on Pštrossova street in New Town was up for sale, the store had already been on the market for nearly a year without a buyer in sight.

Michael Homann, the store's owner for three years, wanted to sell to someone committed to keeping The Globe as a bookstore, but he was losing $120 (2,700 Kč) per day. The situation made him consider an offer to turn what had been the hub of Prague's expatriate community throughout the 1990s into a Spanish restaurant.

Sito intervened this summer, buying the store and its café, even though neither has turned a profit for the past six years. During that time, The Globe's competitors have solidified — and in some cases expanded — their businesses despite lean financial times and an evolving market.

A Moscow-based hedge-fund owner who began his career in Prague and found his first apartment on The Globe's bulletin board, Sito, 34, officially relaunched the store with a party Oct. 26.

With a decline in the number of Americans buying books, established bookstores in the center that have cultivated loyal followings and the looming threat of budget-rate online booksellers, the revamped Globe faces challenges on all sides.

"Being an independent bookseller is hard labor," said Miro Peraica, co-owner of Anagram Bookshop, which has its flagship location on Týn Square. "You have to love it."

Adaptation

The low point for Prague's English-language bookstores, say several owners, was the year and a half following Sept. 11, 2001. Before then, American residents and tourists were the primary customers. But a decline in travel from the United States and a weakened dollar caused a steep drop in sales.

Then the Vltava jumped its banks in August 2002 at the height of the tourist — and book-buying — season, leaving bookstores in the center, like Anagram and Big Ben Bookshop, in the red.

"At one point," said Bojan Lipovšek, co-owner of Big Ben, "there was no light at the end of the tunnel."

But in time, and with the country's accession to the European Union, the English-language book market returned, with a twist: In addition to native speakers, many more Czechs and citizens of other EU states were buying books.

Lipovšek attributes the increased interest to the late-arriving and sloppily translated English-language books that Czechs receive, and the nation's increasing proficiency in the language. Several Czech bookstores have even begun to stock a small selection of English-language books.

Big Ben and Anagram have returned to slight profitability — their margins are always thin — and Anagram has expanded, opening a stand at the airport and a small shop in Vinohrady. Another store, Shakespeare and Sons, opened in Prague 10 in 2002 and has doubled the number of books it stocks each year, many of them used; the owners opened a second store in Malá Strana last year.

Meanwhile, under Homann, the Globe was becoming quirky and unpredictable, said Sito. The store opened late in the morning and closed its kitchen at 6 or 7 p.m. And, as Homann attempted to sell the store, he cut staff and allowed his book inventory to dwindle.

Sito, who studied literature at university, said that in buying The Globe he is not running a charity, and that it shouldn't take anything away from the store's image to have it run a profit by next year.

"There are a lot of inefficiencies in the system," he said, while also stressing that the most important part of owning The Globe is his goal to keep it as a meeting place and hub of literary life for English speakers.

To do so, he has hired more staff, lengthened the store's hours (it's once again open until midnight), redone the interior, revamped the café's menu (with a hike in some prices), and added some 3,000 new books to the store's selection.

Slumbering giant

Skillfully selecting which books to stock has increased in importance with the rise of online retailers, including Amazon.co.uk. Amazon charges a minimum of 330 Kč ($14.65) for basic shipping to Prague, and, when this is added to the book's cost, bookstore owners say their prices match or beat the discount giant.

Still, said Roman Kratochvíl, co-owner of Shakespeare and Sons, Amazon "is easy and people know about it." He has to convince his customers that, because his shop does not charge shipping fees (like Anagram and Big Ben), it's still cheaper to order books he does not have in stock through his shop.

But where the bookstores can't compete with Amazon is in speed of delivery, said Lipovšek. If a customer needs a book immediately and Big Ben and Anagram don't have it in stock — the two stores are within a block of each other — he tells them to use Amazon. Store orders take weeks.

If the nascent competition with Amazon may be a hint of future uncertainty, each owner feels there's room for a reinvigorated Globe.

"Every year more books in English are sold" in Prague, Kratochvíl said.

Peraica, of Anagram, has a different take: The Globe used to be mainly a bookstore, he argued, before it moved to its new location in 2000 and emphasized its café. Now, he doesn't consider it competition.