Booksellers wonder how they’re not ‘essential’
Storeowners hope to overcome shuttered shops with deliveries of books, educational materials
After shutting down their bricks and mortar stores to help curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus, ramping up online and phone ordering, and arranging pickup and delivery services, stretched booksellers were nervous about another potential blow to their businesses: being labelled a non-essential service and being forced to shut down entirely for 14 days.
“I think books are essential,” said Sarah Pietrosk i owner of A Novel Spot Bookshop in Etobicoke about the announcement the Ontario government is ordering all non-essential businesses to close as of Wednesday. “There’s not much else to do (when you’re social distancing). The phones have been ringing like crazy; the online orders have been coming in like crazy.”
In a business environment in which bookshops already experience thin margins and compete against online behemoths such as Amazon for the bookbuying public’s dollars, many worry about the impact of lost sales on the book-selling community.
That includes Heather Reisman, CEO of Indigo Books.
“I was reading (Premier Ford’s) note that the LCBO will remain open,” Reisman said in an interview with the Star. “We are fulfilling requests for parents for books and educational materials for their kids; we are receiving requests for reading material … because, in times of stress, reading is a mindful activity; it is actually stress-reducing.”
When the list of essential services was released Monday evening, it began with these lines: “This does not preclude the provision of work and services by entities not on this list either online, by telephone or by mail/delivery. Note that teleworking and online commerce are permitted at all times for all businesses.”
Reisman said she believes booksellers can continue delivering.
“My interpretation is that we fall under the guidelines for the things that we’re doing.”
Books and educational materials are particularly important for kids, she added, especially since schools in Ontario will stay closed beyond the originally set date of April 6. But the importance of books for adults, too, shouldn’t be underestimated. “Reading is fundamental to the soul,” Reisman said.
She shut down her 200 stores to foot traffic, focusing on online orders, intending to reopen on March 27. Those plans have been put on hold.
“Indigo is a billion-dollar Canadian company so when we close 200 stores it has a very significant impact on the company,” Reisman, adding that she is continuing to pay her employees during the shutdown.
“Every one of us, whether we’re a small, medium-sized or large enterprise, if you’re forced to close, of course it has a very significant impact. You’re still carrying all of the overhead of the business.”
Any further disruptions will call for a concerted government response, she said.
“If it did go on for a couple of months, the only response is a massive injection of cash into the system by the federal and provincial governments. When you do make those decisions, the key is to make decisions that work, so if you do too little you dissipate the funds and you don’t advance the economy.”
Pietroski has been working long hours along with her staff to fulfil online orders after shutting her store to foot traffic.
“We’ll jump through hoops to make our customers happy with reading material while they’re shut in. Hopefully it helps pay the bills that are going to roll in,” Pietroski said.
“It’s frantic. Everyone’s ‘Can you do curbside? Can you deliver?’ It’s great people want to support and they don’t want to be without reading material.”
Kyo Maclear, like all authors, relies on booksellers to get her work to readers. She’s ordered books this last week from her local store, Type Books.
In a climate in which book festivals, author readings, launches and appearances have all been cancelled, many authors are feeling the pinch of fewer book sales.
“I think all of us learned something in the past week about what essential work is: the people who are cleaning the hallways of hospitals to the people who are doing front-line child care for nurses who are doing extra shifts,” she said. “So I that think everyone is having to rejig their understanding of what value is. I’m hoping that books will be considered essential in the sense that they allow us to have that capacious imagination that allows us to see value beyond money, value beyond what’s immediately useful to us individually.
“I’m honestly just really frightened and concerned about our local bookshop and all local businesses. I think it will be a very barren landscape if people … have to start closing shop.”
Jo Saul, who co-owns Type Books’ three-store independent chain, was also concerned that bookstores might be declared non-essential. Type closed to foot traffic a week ago and has instead been offering curbside pickup and deliveries for adult books as well as “books and games and things for kids.”
“We literally leave things outside doors and on porches wherever we can, so I’m very, very, very hopeful that we can continue to do that,” she said.