Day #53: Independent Book Stores
Yesterday was supposed to be Seattle Independent Bookstore Day and my BFF and I were going to take James to kick off his birthday week. Had this plan for months. I was so looking forward to it. The event has been rescheduled for August 29. I hope it happens.
It is so fun to be raising James to be a book lover. He will even lean in and smell new books. He's definitely mine. You've gotta love a kid who thinks of a trip to the bookstore as a big treat (although, to be fair, he's also a big fan of the little toy rack they have there.)
I have never done Independent Bookstore Day but I was in a favorite bookstore a few years ago and heard some customers mention to the owner that that was how they had found her bookstore and they traveled back because they found it so charming. I thought, one of these years I am going to do that and this year James finally felt old enough. The last shift I worked before the library closed I was on their website during some free minutes at the desk, looking at the list of stores and trying to plan (there are a couple of dozen bookstores from the area that participate, I knew with James in tow no way would we make it to all of them.)
I'm in my 40s now so bookselling has changed a lot in my lifetime. I remember early experiences with bookstores: when I first became old enough to do my own Christmas shopping no trip was complete without a stop at the mall's Waldenbooks, in high school my sister and her best friend would often spend a Friday night in what they called the "Barnes and Geek," and I vividly remember as a junior high schooler on a Girl Scout trip to Portland standing in Powells books, a behemoth square city block of books with multiple floors. I also remember hearing early radio commercials in my dad's GMC truck with the only AM radio talking about "a bookstore? online?" which of course was Amazon in the early days.
Now Waldenbooks is a thing of the past, Barnes and Noble hangs on by a thread and is the last chain of its kind, Powells is one of Portland's big tourist destinations, and no one has thought of Amazon as just a bookstore in well over a decade. The book world has changed. There have been midnight release parties of popular YA titles starting with Harry, big selling books can drive media franchises. And you can get digital books! But the marketplace is confusing and bizarre.
One of the audiobooks I've read since being separated from my library was "Harry: a history" about life during the Harry Potter phenomenon and it was a reminder that independent bookstores, then and now, make things like Harry Potter possible. It's hard to imagine now but in the early days of Harry Potter the book establishment wasn't interested. It was rejected several times. This isn't uncommon for books, but Harry was a tough sell. It was too long, it had the British boarding school setting that was considered by many to be elitist and culturally specific, it was the first of a series by an unknown author. In the late 1990s, that just branded it as weird. And in big chain bookstores, which were a thing back then, who got displayed and talked about was tightly controlled and no way was Harry going to fall in that category.
But something weird happened: independent booksellers LOVED it. They started talking about it, and they started putting it in the hands of their customers and customers started to talk about it. By the time the third and fourth books were released, at least in the UK, the release date was a thing, and book release dates before Harry were NEVER a thing. Independent booksellers in the UK made Harry. Without them, there's a good chance a lot of us never would have heard of Harry. This was a word of mouth hand to hand trend that became a global phenomenon.
And, of course, in the 20+ years since then, independent booksellers have been crushed by online competition. It's a hard business to stay in. Google "worst businesses to start" and bookstore will pop right up next to travel agency and video rental store. Ouch.
The ones that have survived, though? People LOVE them. They don't have big margins, they are never going to make millions, but ask a book lover or an author about their neighborhood book store and they will tell you. And the tide is changing. Now that bookstores are non essential and are closed they are suffering big time but there are websites like bookshop.org that will sell books to customers online and send the profits to a neighborhood bookstore. And with Amazon overwhelmed and taking weeks to ship things they don't consider essential, getting books from someplace different has got a lot of appeal to people. Even Amazon "anonymously" (that didn't last) donated 250,000 pounds to a charity set up to help UK booksellers. To most booksellers that feels like too little too late and their response was sort of, you know what we'd prefer? Fair business practices. (Amazon is famous for breaking basic rules of bookselling, including selling bestsellers at a loss and selling books before their pub date. Publishers won't go after them for these violations of contract because they can't afford to lose the market share.) But it is a sign that Amazon thinks making nice with indie booksellers might help their image a bit, which is a sign how highly book people regard their neighborhood booksellers.
As for my family, we've never been Amazon book buyers and I broke up with them entirely last year, cancelling Prime. I don't miss them. Is my Target order any better for the planet or anyone else? Probably not, but I just would rather not work with Amazon and without Prime I place a lot fewer of those orders even at Target.
As for indie bookstores, a lot of them aren't going to make it. These aren't businesses that operate on big margins and two months (at least) closure is killer even if they can fulfill orders online (which most can but a lot of them require you to email them to do so which some people just won't do.) So I've been placing online orders with my favorites as much as I can, even though my book budget is small. I even looked up some of the bookstores we were going to see this weekend for the first time and one of them was a poetry book shop I was excited to learn more about, so I went through their staff picks and new releases and ordered four new books of poetry because why not? Art feeds the soul in these times and maybe that order will get them through another day.
We don't have indications yet what businesses are going to reopen and in what order. The governor is opening private construction and there's rumors state parks could reopen in a week or two. A lot of states are allowing some nonessential businesses to open if they can do curbside service, which could work in a bookstore in theory, although as a browser it won't feel real until they actually open. Premeditated book buying is what I've been doing and it feels bizarre I heard rumors of one tiny bookstore which, before it was forced to close, allowed customers to sign up for an hour in the store by themselves to shop. They would pay a token fee for their hour, which could go towards their books, and then there was a short time between appointments for the owner to do a quick wipe down before the next customer. Any bookshop that has survived this Amazon age has done so by getting creative, I'm hoping some creativity will save them now. We need our poetry and picture books and reading materials now more than ever. I don't know when they'll reopen but for James and I, indie bookstores will be among our first stops, August 29 or sooner.
Media today: James and I finished Mrs. Piggle Wiggle yesterday and started Pippi Longstocking today. I'm LOVING sharing those books with him. Trying to decide what is next and when he will be old enough for Harry Potter. (Maybe by the fall for book 1.) Finally finished my audiobook of the Graveyard Book...it drags in the middle but that ending, man, it's a really good book. Still slogging though Before Green Gables, really quite close to abandoning it now. And since Max didn't sleep really at all last night there was a lot of lazy time with The Mary Tyler Moore show...I really hate the Hulu interface but am appreciating the programming.
Today I'm grateful for books, James, naps, chocolate chip cookies, coffee, snuggles, that both kids are currently sleeping and that (knock on wood) most nights aren't like last night. Also for my talented nephew who had a job interview today and for continued health for my friends and family.
It is so fun to be raising James to be a book lover. He will even lean in and smell new books. He's definitely mine. You've gotta love a kid who thinks of a trip to the bookstore as a big treat (although, to be fair, he's also a big fan of the little toy rack they have there.)
I have never done Independent Bookstore Day but I was in a favorite bookstore a few years ago and heard some customers mention to the owner that that was how they had found her bookstore and they traveled back because they found it so charming. I thought, one of these years I am going to do that and this year James finally felt old enough. The last shift I worked before the library closed I was on their website during some free minutes at the desk, looking at the list of stores and trying to plan (there are a couple of dozen bookstores from the area that participate, I knew with James in tow no way would we make it to all of them.)
I'm in my 40s now so bookselling has changed a lot in my lifetime. I remember early experiences with bookstores: when I first became old enough to do my own Christmas shopping no trip was complete without a stop at the mall's Waldenbooks, in high school my sister and her best friend would often spend a Friday night in what they called the "Barnes and Geek," and I vividly remember as a junior high schooler on a Girl Scout trip to Portland standing in Powells books, a behemoth square city block of books with multiple floors. I also remember hearing early radio commercials in my dad's GMC truck with the only AM radio talking about "a bookstore? online?" which of course was Amazon in the early days.
Now Waldenbooks is a thing of the past, Barnes and Noble hangs on by a thread and is the last chain of its kind, Powells is one of Portland's big tourist destinations, and no one has thought of Amazon as just a bookstore in well over a decade. The book world has changed. There have been midnight release parties of popular YA titles starting with Harry, big selling books can drive media franchises. And you can get digital books! But the marketplace is confusing and bizarre.
One of the audiobooks I've read since being separated from my library was "Harry: a history" about life during the Harry Potter phenomenon and it was a reminder that independent bookstores, then and now, make things like Harry Potter possible. It's hard to imagine now but in the early days of Harry Potter the book establishment wasn't interested. It was rejected several times. This isn't uncommon for books, but Harry was a tough sell. It was too long, it had the British boarding school setting that was considered by many to be elitist and culturally specific, it was the first of a series by an unknown author. In the late 1990s, that just branded it as weird. And in big chain bookstores, which were a thing back then, who got displayed and talked about was tightly controlled and no way was Harry going to fall in that category.
But something weird happened: independent booksellers LOVED it. They started talking about it, and they started putting it in the hands of their customers and customers started to talk about it. By the time the third and fourth books were released, at least in the UK, the release date was a thing, and book release dates before Harry were NEVER a thing. Independent booksellers in the UK made Harry. Without them, there's a good chance a lot of us never would have heard of Harry. This was a word of mouth hand to hand trend that became a global phenomenon.
And, of course, in the 20+ years since then, independent booksellers have been crushed by online competition. It's a hard business to stay in. Google "worst businesses to start" and bookstore will pop right up next to travel agency and video rental store. Ouch.
The ones that have survived, though? People LOVE them. They don't have big margins, they are never going to make millions, but ask a book lover or an author about their neighborhood book store and they will tell you. And the tide is changing. Now that bookstores are non essential and are closed they are suffering big time but there are websites like bookshop.org that will sell books to customers online and send the profits to a neighborhood bookstore. And with Amazon overwhelmed and taking weeks to ship things they don't consider essential, getting books from someplace different has got a lot of appeal to people. Even Amazon "anonymously" (that didn't last) donated 250,000 pounds to a charity set up to help UK booksellers. To most booksellers that feels like too little too late and their response was sort of, you know what we'd prefer? Fair business practices. (Amazon is famous for breaking basic rules of bookselling, including selling bestsellers at a loss and selling books before their pub date. Publishers won't go after them for these violations of contract because they can't afford to lose the market share.) But it is a sign that Amazon thinks making nice with indie booksellers might help their image a bit, which is a sign how highly book people regard their neighborhood booksellers.
As for my family, we've never been Amazon book buyers and I broke up with them entirely last year, cancelling Prime. I don't miss them. Is my Target order any better for the planet or anyone else? Probably not, but I just would rather not work with Amazon and without Prime I place a lot fewer of those orders even at Target.
As for indie bookstores, a lot of them aren't going to make it. These aren't businesses that operate on big margins and two months (at least) closure is killer even if they can fulfill orders online (which most can but a lot of them require you to email them to do so which some people just won't do.) So I've been placing online orders with my favorites as much as I can, even though my book budget is small. I even looked up some of the bookstores we were going to see this weekend for the first time and one of them was a poetry book shop I was excited to learn more about, so I went through their staff picks and new releases and ordered four new books of poetry because why not? Art feeds the soul in these times and maybe that order will get them through another day.
We don't have indications yet what businesses are going to reopen and in what order. The governor is opening private construction and there's rumors state parks could reopen in a week or two. A lot of states are allowing some nonessential businesses to open if they can do curbside service, which could work in a bookstore in theory, although as a browser it won't feel real until they actually open. Premeditated book buying is what I've been doing and it feels bizarre I heard rumors of one tiny bookstore which, before it was forced to close, allowed customers to sign up for an hour in the store by themselves to shop. They would pay a token fee for their hour, which could go towards their books, and then there was a short time between appointments for the owner to do a quick wipe down before the next customer. Any bookshop that has survived this Amazon age has done so by getting creative, I'm hoping some creativity will save them now. We need our poetry and picture books and reading materials now more than ever. I don't know when they'll reopen but for James and I, indie bookstores will be among our first stops, August 29 or sooner.
Media today: James and I finished Mrs. Piggle Wiggle yesterday and started Pippi Longstocking today. I'm LOVING sharing those books with him. Trying to decide what is next and when he will be old enough for Harry Potter. (Maybe by the fall for book 1.) Finally finished my audiobook of the Graveyard Book...it drags in the middle but that ending, man, it's a really good book. Still slogging though Before Green Gables, really quite close to abandoning it now. And since Max didn't sleep really at all last night there was a lot of lazy time with The Mary Tyler Moore show...I really hate the Hulu interface but am appreciating the programming.
Today I'm grateful for books, James, naps, chocolate chip cookies, coffee, snuggles, that both kids are currently sleeping and that (knock on wood) most nights aren't like last night. Also for my talented nephew who had a job interview today and for continued health for my friends and family.
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