The nine staff at Wanganui's Whitcoulls face an uncertain future with the store's parent company in financial trouble.
The Wanganui manager was unwilling to talk to the Chronicle yesterday, and the store was trading as usual.
Parent company REDGroup Retailers is calling on customers to keep up their support.
The company also ownsthe Borders and Bennetts bookshops. The Whitcoulls chain has 65 New Zealand stores and employs hundreds of people.
Staff had virtually no prior warning of the financial meltdown, National Distribution Union general secretary Robert Reid said.
"The company has been very obstructive in pay negotiations and instead of being open with us and their problems, they have been playing hard ball."
Closure of the chain would not be the end of the book industry, but would have grave results, Booksellers New Zealand chief executive Lincoln Gould said.
The problem has come at a time when the sale of books online is starting to have an impact on physical book stores.
Whitcoulls was bought by Pacific Equity Partners (PEP) in 2004. PEP is an Australasian private equity firm that focuses on "buyouts and late-stage expansion capital in Australia and New Zealand", its website says. It also owns Tegel, Griffin's Foods and Hoyts.
Whitcoulls joined other book and newsagent chains to fall under a PEP branch called REDGroup Retail.
That branch now has substantial debts and has been put into voluntary administration.
Voluntary administration is a relatively new way of quickly rehabilitating ailing businesses. It freezes their financial position while the administrator talks to creditors and decides on the future.
They must call a meeting of creditors within eight working days.
They then assess the situation and call another meeting within 20 working days. That meeting can either liquidate the company, return it to its directors or appoint another administrator.
Ferrier Hodgson has been appointed administrator and is preparing for a first meeting with creditors early next month.
