The owner of one of Sussex’s handful of remaining independent bookshops has said his company’s longevity is down to diversifying – away from books and into art.

Darion Goodwin, owner of Kemptown Bookshop on St George’s Road, Brighton, said it is “impossible” to survive on books alone.

Latest figures from the Booksellers Association show that a third of the 1,535 independent stores they recorded in 2005 have closed down.

There were 987 at the end of last year – the first time the total has been under a thousand since records began.

Mr Goodwin believes up to 10 independent bookshops in the city have gone out of business since his days as a university student in the city three decades ago.

Popular names like Robinsons, Bredons, Unicorn, Combridge and Public House have all disappeared from the streets and throughout the country the picture is the same.

A number of factors have combined to facilitate the near demise of the independent bookseller in the last two decades, from the rise of internet giants, the advent of e-readers and the recession seeing falling spending.

Industry figures show that independents only have a 5% share of the market compared to 36% for chain bookshops and 31% for internet-only retailers, principally Amazon.

Darion continued to patronise the bookshop after gaining bachelors and masters degrees from the University of Sussex even as he worked as a psychologist.

“I loved it and I loved the people that ran it,” he said. “It was nice to talk to them.

“They knew about books. They had a good selection of literary fiction.

“I had been coming here for years and one day I said I would like to run a bookshop and they said: ‘How about this one?’”

The previous owners, Gisela and Vernon Hendy, sold the business to him in 1996 and he has had to be innovative to remain above water.

He changed the stock profile from mainly second-hand books to new books, converted the basement and first floor into additional shop floors and diversified his stock to include premium stationery, board games, children’s toys, coffee mugs, greeting cards, magnifiers stamps and his most successful range – limited edition printed art.

Darion believes in independents because “places in which to discover books have to be attractive”.

“The real environment of a bookshop is far superior to the virtual environment offered by a computer.”