No, you don’t. “I have a Kindle, but I like the physical book in my hands.” Right. “I’ll be back.” No, you won’t. “Is that your best price?” Do you price-haggle in Two Boys Meat & Grocery?
Never have I sold a book to such persons, and they darken the doorways of my open-shop bookseller friends, too. Such persons, if they buy books at all, buy them from an Amazon warehouse, not from an independent bookshop. They believe (because they have heard) assertions that the Covid-19 pandemic was “good for bookstores.” They trumpet feel-good stories about the number of books sold during the pandemic. They don’t usually know, however, that such statistics don’t distinguish between sale of an old Bible, a P.O.D., a battered mass market paperback, an electronic download, a coffee-stained book-on-tape, a bookstore gift-card, a self-published, stapled Word document or a raft of post-cards. They point to the number of “bookstores” that opened post-2020--even though most weren’t open shops—and don’t want to learn the number of those that closed or why.
Real, live bricks-and-mortar bookshops continue either to close their doors altogether, to seek refuge in on-line selling only or to shift to service-provision or sale of sidelights. Powell’s Books closed within days of Covid-induced lockdown and fired hundreds of employees. Thirty-five bookstore members of our flagship organization, the American Booksellers Association, closed in the first several months of 2020. Hundreds more independent shops shuttered for good.
The mass exodus of the independent bookshop from our culture is to our great detriment. “Losing an independent bookstore [can be] a huge blow to a community, said Bryce Covert in an October 26, 2020 article for Vox. He quotes a bookseller as saying, “These are places where folks can come together to discuss what’s going on in the world, to also have a safe haven and a safe place for exploring new ideas . . . [Bookstores] “provide everything from sanctuary to just meditative spaces.” Bookstores employ people, pay taxes, sponsor athletes, raise neighborhood property values, host Bridge-playing ladies, and help to keep communities alive and vibrant.
Two dear bookseller-friends appeared recently on a morning news-style promotion of their fine bookshop. As a hand-held camera panned shakily across the shelves to show its television viewers what a decent bookstore looks like, a microphone-holding young reporter extolled the virtues of the store and its owners. She held up a $16 book that she was sure would appeal to her studio colleague: “I’ll just check out this book.” “Book lovers,” she gushed, “you want to step into this place.” Having been shown a unique, gob-smackingly magnificent book by one of the owners, a fashion catalogue featuring actual fabric swaths from the Fall ’91 line with which the customer could order that actual dresses be made, she says, “I’ll be taking that Valentino book.”
Uh, no you won’t. Both books are still available. Maybe she’ll back when she has a bit more time.
Write to me at [email protected] . Find me at http://www.svafinebooks.com.
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