Indie Bookstores amidst a Pandemic: 
What They Can Teach Us About Community, Local Actions, and Healthcare

On March 17th, Portland’s famed, “city of books,” and the largest independent and used bookstore in the world, laid off the majority of its employees. In the face of Covid-19, the beloved indie has closed indefinitely, leaving its staff without wages or healthcare during a global pandemic. 

In a community letter, owner Emily Powell explained that “when we do open our stores again, we expect the landscape of Oregon, and all of our abilities to spend money on books and gifts, will have changed dramatically.” Amidst this accelerating economic crisis, indie bookstores across the country have had to shut down and lay off workers; in one week alone, three of the nation’s most prominent indies laid off over 600 employees, and these numbers will surely continue to rise. Independent bookstores overcame seemingly insurmountable technological and consumerist obstacles over the last decade but might disappear altogether in a post-pandemic environment.

I’ve spent many hours perusing the eclectic stacks of Powell’s. When you wander through the maze-like setup, you feel like you’re inching closer to a heightened state of kindness and intellectualism. The staff who worked there are profoundly knowledgeable and endearingly eccentric, but above all, they are loving. They love their store and they love their books: they love engaging with fellow readers and they love their community. I cannot extricate the person I am today from the various indie bookstores I’ve loitered in over the years. I spent god knows how many hours in high school wandering around Boston’s Trident Booksellers and Cafe, and my heart breaks when I think about how different it will look in just a few months. We lose so much when such beloved stores shut their doors and lay off staff. 

Until two weeks ago, independent bookstores had proved to be “a story of hope for community-led businesses:” they provided “a road map for any retailer —independent or otherwise—into how to survive, even thrive against the competitive onslaught of Amazon.” When Amazon burst onto the scene in 1994, the future for indie bookstores looked bleak. The number of independent booksellers in the U.S. dropped by a staggering 43% between 1994 and 1999, and from 2000 to 2009, this steady decline continued. At the beginning of the 2010s, publishers everywhere worried that the popularization of the Kindle would bring about an “ebook revolution” and therefore an effective death of print literature. 

And yet, shockingly, throughout the 2010’s the number of independent bookstores rose, with the American Booksellers Association (ABA) seeing a 49% rise in store membership between 2009 and 2019. Even though the big box store, Barnes & Noble, reported a 3% revenue decrease in fiscal year 2019, sales of ABA member stores grew an average of 5%. Millennials and Gen Zs, so called “digital natives,” already spent so much of their lives connected to screens and social media that they gravitated to print books, effectively ending all promise of the ebook revolution. Meanwhile, independent bookstores offered something that Amazon and even Barnes & Noble could not: community. 

Harvard researcher Ryan Raffaeli found that successful indies operate on the 3Cs model: community, curation, and convening. They leverage this human approach to beat out big box stores and Amazon. If there’s anything positive to be gleaned from social distancing, it’s that we are nothing without our ability to gather. Raffaeli describes a localism propagated by indie bookstores that extends into a “social movement and a way for shoppers to support their local economy:” indeed, these bookstores helped birth the now popular “Buy Local” movement. When you shop at your indie bookstore not only do you funnel money into a community business, but you also discover local writers and artists who would not have had such a platform without a local store. The post pandemic economy will, in all likelihood, prove deadly to indie bookstores, but it doesn’t have to if we redouble our commitment to community.   

***

In weathering this pandemic, we can learn from these beloved bookstores. We need a local action approach as we navigate the economic turmoil of the pandemic. We need to take collective action to advocate for rent freezes and to build mutual aid networks: you can contribute to NYU’s student generated mutual aid network here.

Frankly, however, no one should have to crowdsource resources in a functioning state. When New York City’s own Strand bookstore closed and laid off its workers for the first time in its 93 year history, its leadership pledged to work with its providers and union to extend its staff’s health insurance for “as long as possible.” This is a fragile and potentially fatal setup. Under a nationalized healthcare system, these employees would not have to spend the indefinite length of the store’s shutdown hoping they still had healthcare. 

It’s also worth highlighting that the Strand’s owner, Nancy Bass Wyden, has assets worth between $12 million and $56 million, putting her and her husband—Oregon Senator Ron Wyden—on the list of the wealthiest members of Congress. And yet, we should not expect the Strand’s owner to bail out its vulnerable employees during this debilitating period, because we cannot expect any wealthy members of our society to do the right thing, so to speak: there’s no legal or material reason compelling them to, so they will not. In The Politics of Everybody, philosopher Holly Lewis explains:

“because capitalism is a system of social relations, not a person, static group, or moral agreement, it does not respond to moral arguments or moral outrage. The world’s Scrooges will not bring a pheasant to the world’s Tiny Tims. The Grinch’s heart will not grow three sizes larger and he will not return the Christmas gifts Whoville.” 

We cannot rely on the kindness of millionaires and billionaires, because if they won’t bail out the 99 percent during a historic pandemic and economic crisis, we have no reason to believe they will ever do so. 

Just like the Covid-19 crisis has revealed the importance of the community and convening model that makes indie bookstores so singular in their appeal, it has also clarified the fundamental separation between the ruling class and those bearing the brunt of this crisis. While some are predicting the highest unemployment rates we’ve seen in 40 years, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon received a $7.7 million cash bonus, making him the best-paid Sachs chief since 2008. While nurses and doctors are reusing protective gear out of a lack of resources, investment bankers are pressuring health care firms to raise prices on masks and pharmaceuticals, because they view emergency pandemic spending as an opportunity to gain billions of dollars. This country works for them, not for you. 

***

There are several steps you can to support your local indie bookstore during the pandemic. You can donate to the BINC Foundation, which supports booksellers facing financial distress. If you’re stocking up on quarantine reads, check if your local indies are delivering or offering curbside pick-ups, instead of immediately turning to Amazon. You can even pre-order books from these stores to give them some revenue now, when they desperately need it, and pick the book up when it eventually releases. 

But even though we can and should respond on the individual scale, the story of mass layoffs in indie bookstores is ultimately a story of national failure. It’s a story of a government that doesn’t guarantee healthcare, and that let Amazon eat into the health of these community centers while taxing the monopoly only 1.2%  in 2019 and 0% in previous years. And while we take a localist approach in supporting local bookstores and in facilitating mutual aid, we must also highlight that we wouldn’t need to take any of this action amidst a pandemic if only we could rely on a stronger social safety net.