Happy Independents Day! Three Cheers for Your Local Bookseller

Independent thought is the product of independent means.

–Virginia Woolf

I have 150 books. I don’t have a bookcase, because nobody would lend me one.

–Henny Youngman

On 6/24, the Galley Cat blog, an essential source of publishing news, had a piece about a mystery writer who asked J.B. Dickey, owner of the Seattle Mystery Bookshop about a signing for a book being published by Amazon’s new mystery imprint. Here is part of Dickey’s response:

“We cannot do anything to support, help or benefit Amazon. They’re the enemy of independent bookshops and aiding them in any way—mainly ordering their books and selling them and promoting them—would be suicide. Things are tough enough without cutting our own throats.”

This is true for all other booksellers, so it will be interesting to see how other booksellers respond to Amazon becoming a print publisher. More than two thirds of independent booksellers are out of business, and the toll continues to rise. Among the reasons are

• Walden and B. Dalton’s stores (now gone) in shopping malls
• then Border’s and Barnes & Noble
• then the big box stores like Costco and Walmart
• then online booksellers–with Amazon leading the charge. (Amazingly enough, the indies have survived the chains in downtown San Francisco, which both Border’s and Barnes and Noble have left. Northern California has the best network of independent bookstores in America.)
• borrowing books from friends and the library
• shoplifting
• economic problems
• rising costs
• used bookstores
• new books that are remaindered at very low prices to get rid of inventory
• the rising cost of books. (When I worked in bookstores in the sixties, you could walk into a store with a five-dollar bill and walk out with at least five books.)
• the growing number of ways for consumers to spend their free time and discretionary income
• less space to stock books
• smaller discounts from publishers
• browsers who look at books and then order them online
• the ease, speed, and prices of buying ebooks

There is also the indie business model. I would guess that most indies are mom-and-pop shops started not to make money, but the owners love books and sharing their passion for them (the same reason people go into publishing). So chances are they weren’t been the best managed businesses in town. However, those that remain are among the best-run retailers in the community.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos once said on Charlie Rose that price, selection, and convenience are a tough combination to beat. If you were Bezos, you would want all books in all forms to be published and sold by Amazon, and the company is doing everything it can to achieve that goal. Apple and Google are also staking their claim in the ebook world. Technology changes so quickly and unpredictably that it’s impossible to predict what the publishing and bookselling landscape will look like by the end of the decade.

One easy prediction: the Six Sisters that dominate trade books today—Grand Central, HarperCollins, Penguin, Random House, St. Martin’s, and Simon & Schuster—will not dominate the industry then.

Five Reasons to Support Indie Booksellers

• Indie booksellers can still help make books by new authors succeed by handselling them to customers whose tastes they know.
• When you buy from an independent store, 68 cents of every dollar the store makes stays in the community. When you buy from a chain, it’s 43 cents. The community loses a quarter of every dollar spent in a chain. Unless an online store is based in your community, I assume the community loses all of the income.
• Indies host events, are knowledgeable about the industry, and enjoy talking about books, and they will help you in any way they can.
• As a writer, you are also an independent business, although I hope your books enable you to become a multimedia, multinational conglomerate of one. You should support the independent businesses you want to support you. You may be able to partner on promotions with them. What would your community be like without them?
• As faithful readers know, one way to know that businesses, nonprofits, and governments are too powerful is that they abuse their power. We are all victims of this every day. Wouldn’t it be better to support the solution than the problem?
• The people who run technology comopanies are not book people, they’re techies and businesspeople. They care about profits, not books, and are as easily corrupted by power as other people who have too much of it.

Running an independent bookstore that is a community center for people who care about books and reading is extremely hard work that, if well done, produces a very small profit. The one-percent solution: spending one percent of your net income in your local bookseller for yourself or for gifts. Suggest that your local bookseller have a list of committed customers on their wall. The indies hardy enough to survive the onslaught of technology and mammoth retailers are cultural heroes who deserve all the support you can give them. Happy Independents Day!

Questions and comments always welcome. The 9^th San Francisco Writers Conference / A Celebration of Craft, Commerce & Community / February 16-20, 2012 / www.sfwriters.org / sfwriterscon@aol.com / 415-673-0939 / https://sfwriters.org/blog / @SFWC / http://www.facebook.com/pages/San-Francisco-Writers-Conference/112732798786104 / 1029 Jones St. / San Francisco, CA 94109 / San Francisco Writers University / Where Writers Meet and You Learn / Laurie McLean, Dean / free classes / www.sfwritersu.com / sfwritersu@gmail.com / @SFWritersU

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