It was a civic-minded endeavor.

Rebecca Guthrie said she bought Bell Book & Candle in April 2005 and renamed it Bethel Avenue Book Company to keep a local bookstore in Port Orchard.

But the store at 1037 Bethel Avenue will follow several others in Kitsap County within the next couple of months when it closes.

Guthrie, who later partnered with her husband J.B. Hall, a retired civil engineer, and long-time friend Frances Cunningham, a retired appraiser, said there were successes. She said when they moved the store across the street from Debbie Macomber’s complex into a 2,700-square foot building in the High Point Shopping Center in February 2007, foot traffic increased by 30 percent in the first month.

They all agreed that it was a convergence of factors that led to the store’s demise. Bay Street Books, whose owner, Ross Wigley, said his bookstore is struggling similar to other downtown businesses, remains for now selling used and out-of-print books. But some of the nearest stores selling new books now for South Kitsap residents will be big boxes such as Borders in Gig Harbor and Barnes & Noble in Silverdale.

In addition to the major stores dominating the market share, Guthrie said that e-book readers, which include Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook, also have lured away many customers.

“As a society, we want to buy things cheap — $9.99 for an e-book or $30 for a hardcover? — it’s not hard to choose,” she said.

All three said that really became apparent during the holidays. Sales traditionally were the best during that time of the year, but they said those fell off substantially after October, while 2010 was the first year that e-books outsold regular books nationally.

“The market share is just going away,” Hall said. “The e-market is taking them all away.”

Guthrie, 61, is clear that she is not bitter about the store’s demise or the circumstances surrounding it. She said her initial plan was to remain open for five years because she felt another bookstore would open in the community at that point.

“The world has changed for us several times over,” she said. “I watch color TV. I don’t begrudge anyone that changes.”

A retired financial planner, Guthrie said she bought the bookstore to keep it around in addition to giving her more to do than taking care of her elderly mother. But the store’s financial constraints prevented it from having optimal staffing levels — even Cunningham and Hall only work part time — and Guthrie said she regularly logged 12-14 hours a day.

She estimates that it only would be viable to keep the bookstore open if it had 500 customers monthly — and that Bethel attracted about 350.

Hall, 60, is a grandfather and said those are some of the customers that could be most affected by the loss of local bookstores.

“When you’re buying a book for your grandchild, you want to hold it,” he said. “You get that at a brick-and-mortar bookstore.”

Cunningham, 61, said that extends to fans of Port Orchard author Macomber, who has authored more than 150 romance novels and contemporary women’s fiction stories. Cunningham said unlike many competitors, they were willing to deliver those books at no extra cost to those who ordered them.

“This is the group I’m worried about,” she said. “These women are so grateful.”

Even after the bookstore closes, Cunningham said they plan to take special orders for those books through April.

The rest of the bookstore was beginning to clear out by mid-January. Guthrie said they had $121,000 worth of merchandise at the end of 2010, but more than of third of that is gone. Guthrie said many books were donated to local schools and the Friends of Manchester Library, whose building was inundated after a pipe burst during a storm before Thanksgiving.

Manchester Elementary School librarian Kim Marchel estimates that her school has received $500 in donations from Bethel Avenue Book Company this school year. She said Guthrie even has delivered books to the school at no charge in the past.

“She has been more than generous to us,” Marchel said. “It will be a great loss.”

Even with the store closing, Guthrie does not plan to venture far. She said she will volunteer at the Kitsap Historical Museum Bookstore.

“We were proud to be here,” she said. “We wanted to give as much as possible back to our community.”