New York ? Gary Frank, longtime owner of The Booksmith in San Francisco, is thinking about retirement. Finding a buyer shouldn’t be that hard: The bookstore is doing well, and it’s located in the historic Haight-Ashbury district.

But Frank isn’t sure he’ll succeed. His children aren’t interested in running the family business, and he’s wary of just anyone taking over. He wants someone who cares about books, someone undeterred by all the talk about the decline of independent stores.

After a decade of competing with superstore chains and online retailers, booksellers such as Frank now face a truly immovable foe time itself. Hundreds of owners who founded stores in the 1960s and ’70s, a golden age for independent sellers, are now in their 50s and 60s and wondering who will replace them.

“You have all these people who really want to bow out and just don’t know what to do,” says Frank, 50, who started The Booksmith in 1976.

“There are a lot of good bookstores that are still good businesses sitting there, waiting for a good buyer. But where are the good buyers?” says John Barringer, owner of the Little Professor Book Center in Charlotte, N.C.

Barringer, 66, considered selling a few years ago, but encountered only “tire-kickers,” those who simply liked the idea of running a bookstore. Now semiretired, he says he could guarantee a 20 percent return on the investment, but still doubts that he’d find any takers.

“A bookstore in most communities is not terribly salable because there are so many of them,” says Barringer, whose store is within 2 miles of three superstores.

The “succession” problem has caused so much concern that the American Booksellers Assn. is planning a workshop at this May’s BookExpo America. A recent suggestion that California store owners meet and discuss retirement strategies received an “overwhelming response,” according to Hut Landon, director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Assn.

“Many of the stores have been in business 15, 25, 30 years. It’s a very mature market, with a lot of customer loyalty, and they’ve been able to fight the superstores,” Landon says. “But the other side of the mature market is that a lot of owners are ready to retire.”

Selling an independent bookstore, owners say, is nothing like selling an ordinary business. The goal isn’t to make a profit and walk away. They see their stores as members of communities and want them to remain so.

“Booksellers want to find someone they believe will carry on the tradition of the store,” says Rusty Drugan, executive director of the New England Booksellers Assn. “The prospective buyer should have a passion for what the store stands for and not just a passion for money.”