Save local bookstores with major purchase
Houstonians, if you want to have bookstores to shop in next year, then you must shop in bookstores this year. You may have read that River Oaks Bookstore, which has been open since 1974, is closing. That the store has decided to shutter is not so much a surprise — River Oaks is an old-school, carriage trade bookstore, one that sold full-priced hardcover books to an aging, well-heeled population — but it is a shame. If we hope to keep literary culture alive in this city, we cannot afford to lose any more bookstores. Here in Houston, we can count our remaining major indie stores on one hand, these include Blue Willow Bookshop — which was a finalist for Publishers Weekly’s 2020 Bookstore of the Year, Brazos Bookstore and Murder by the Book. Chicago, a city of comparable size, has more than 20 prominent independent bookstores.
When I ask you to shop in bookstores, that means not ordering books from Amazon or buying them from places where you can also buy an air fryer and cat litter. Just like restaurants, bookstores have been suffering during the pandemic, with many reporting sales have fallen between 20-40 percent, and worked twice as hard for every sale. In contrast, Amazon has thrived, growing revenue 40 percent and posting its biggest profit ever in the last quarter. When it comes to the book business, the company now “accounts for over half of all print book sales and over 80 percent of e-book sales,” according to a report issued by the antitrust subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee in October.
Bookstores operate on very thin margins — 3 percent profit is considered a good year — and despite what you may think, it is a physically demanding, modestly paid retail job, albeit one that requires more book smarts than a PhD.
The situation is urgent. The American Booksellers Association has stated that as many as 1 out of 5 independent bookstores in the United States may close permanently by this time next year. To put it in numbers, there are approximately 1,850 indie bookstores and companies in the United States — and that means more than 400 stores would close, at a loss of thousands of jobs. Recently, you may have seen the viral pleas from famous bookstores like The Strand in New York, Harvard Book Store in Boston and Shakespeare and Company in Paris on social media begging for your support. It’s that bad. In fact, all over the United States, stores large and small have been running GoFundMe campaigns to raise cash to stay open and pay employees — the business equivalent of panhandling — for much of the past year.
The American Booksellers Association has been doing what it can to help. It has sponsored awareness campaigns, including one that saw several bookstores in New York City, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles covered in craft paper and covered in slogans that read: “Buy your books from people who want to sell books not colonize the moon,”; “Anyone feel weird about making a $1.6 trillion company richer?”
What can you do to help? Well, this week, the most anticipated and likely bestselling book of the year will go on sale: “A Promised Land,” the first volume of Barack Obama’s presidential memoirs. It’s a whopper of a book, coming in at over 700 pages and priced at a not insignificant sum of $45. If you plan to buy this book as a holiday gift for yourself or that loved one with a propensity to tune into CNBC instead of Fox News, I implore you to please consider buying it from an actual bookstore.
Why? The answer is simple: Ordering it from Amazon takes money out of the community and puts another spade in the ground for the grave being dug for local bookstores. Yes, ordering from online is convenient, but when you factor in the lost tax revenue and jobs, the environmental impact and resulting empty storefronts all of which lower your property values — it may not be cheaper in the long run.
If you want to order online, you have a new option: Bookshop.org. The website launched earlier this year as an alternative to Amazon and that also returns money to local bookstores. With over $40 million in sales so far Bookshop.org is doing well and have returned nearly $8 million to local stores.
So, as you can see, if you want to have bookstores in the community this time next year, if you want a safe place, unplugged where you and your children can let your imaginations and sense of wonder flourish, where you can find just the right book for an impossible-to-shopfor loved one — shop at a bookstore not run by bots.
Go to Blue Willow and ask Valerie and Cathy about the latest awesome children’s books.
Go to Brazos and ask Mark and Ulrika for the hippest new fiction.
Go to Kaboom and ask John and Dee to suggest something unexpected.
Go to Murder by the Book and ask McKenna and Sally to recommend a great mystery.
Go to River Oaks Bookstore and say goodbye and thank you to Jeanne, Michael and Whitney.
Just go, before it is too late.