Lee Booksellers celebrated its 30th anniversary just a couple of weeks ago.

It will be the independent bookstore's last.

Linda Hillegass, who co-owns the store with her husband, Jim McKee, said the couple plan to retire.

Hillegass said she will be 63 in March and McKee turns 69 this month. On top of that, the lease on the store, in the Edgewood Shopping Center at 56th and Nebraska 2, is up soon.

"It's just the right time to do it," she said.

Hillegass said the economy also played a role in the decision.

"The big effect the economy has had is that we can't sell the store," she said. "We did try to sell the store, and it didn't work."

Independent bookstores have been falling by the wayside for years, challenged by big-box discount retailers, large bookstore chains such as Barnes & Noble and Internet retailers such as Amazon.com.

Meg Smith, chief marketing officer of the American Booksellers Association, a trade group for independent bookstores, said all retailers are hit hard in a recession, but bookstores are among the hardest hit because profit margins on books are extremely small.

"Our membership is down 10 percent in the past year," Smith said.

Independent bookstores aren't the only ones struggling, though.

Borders Group announced last month that it will close 200 of its Waldenbooks locations in January, and Barnes & Noble has been closing its B Dalton stores when their leases expire, including the one at Westfield Gateway mall last May.

There was much less competition when Hillegass and McKee started their business 30 years ago, but that didn't mean selling books was easy.

The couple opened two J&L Lee Booksellers stores in November 1979 -- one at East Park Plaza and one at Edgewood.

At that time, the economy was in much the same condition that it is today, and the Edgewood store lasted only a year.

Hillegass and McKee then opened a store in the Piedmont Shops, at Cotner Boulevard and A Street in 1990, and then opened the current Edgewood store in 1992.

The couple also for a time ran leased book departments at Brandeis/Younkers at Crossroads Mall in Omaha, and at two Miller & Paine/Dillards stores in Lincoln.

The East Park, Piedmont and Edgewood stores stayed open throughout the 1990s despite the opening of the state's first Barnes & Noble in Lincoln in 1994, which Hillegass told the Journal Star in 2004 led to a 37 percent decline in business.

The East Park store was the first to go in 2000, after the mall changed ownership, the new owners remodeled and adopted a different retailing concept.

Then in 2006, Hillegass and McKee decided to close the Piedmont store when its lease expired.

That left only the 5,000-square-foot Edgewood store, which has been known for its author signings -- often local authors but some big names, too, such as Nicholas Sparks and Clive Cussler.

The store is closed until Thursday, when it will begin a going-out-of-business sale starting at 9 a.m. The sale will include not only inventory but fixtures, furniture and equipment as well.

Hillegass said she and McKee hired a liquidation firm to run the sale, which has told them to expect crowds and a long line when the store opens Thursday.

Those customers will be there not only for the deals, but, undoubtedtly, to say goodbye to what's become a local institution.

"We expect to have to keep the Kleenex box handy," McKee said. "We know our many longtime customers will be saddened."

Reach Matt Olberding at 473-2647 or molberding@journalstar.com.