BATON ROUGE - A large retailer in the Towne Center shopping center will shut down soon, leaving a large occupancy open.

According to the Baton Rouge Business Report, Books-A-Million in Towne Center is scheduled to close in early 2018, but the reason as to why it's closing is still unknown.

Brian Mooney spends time in the store scouting out the best audiobooks and hates to see the store succumb to this.

"Well I'm sad to see that this store is going out of business, we've come here for years and we live right down the street practically but kind of expected it, they haven't been doing too well," said Mooney.

The Towne Center location is one of six in the state, and it's unclear if this more than 15,000 square foot business will relocate somewhere else.

"Everybody really getting hit. Even the Walmart's of the world are getting hit because everybody's buying as much as they can online. Even though now they've introduced the sales tax in Louisiana for online sales, it's still easier more convenient," said Mooney.

Paul Miller lives in Denham Springs and enjoys shopping at Books-A-Million and he says he's running out of places to buy books.

"We've been here for years, we used to go to Cortana Mall but it closed down. Now we got this one here and it's closing, I don't know what's going to happen," said Miller. 

"It's really sad to think about because personally, I love to sit back with a book and be able to physically flip a page, though I know there are many people who actually use kindles and their iPhones to read. I think there are still people who that will still buy a book," said Michelle Bui.