Shelf Aware
Independent bookstores thrive by drawing strength from the community.
During regional and national stay-at-home orders, bookstores were often among the first businesses to reopen, as they are considered as essential as businesses related to food and health. Despite various temporary closures, book sales went up in 2020, especially among independent neighborhood bookstores. Bookshop is an online profit-sharing platform created, paradoxically, to support local brick-and-mortar bookstores. The socially conscious platform allows booksellers to create a virtual shopfront and has raised over $13m for independent bookstores in the U.S. and the U.K.
But online sales aren’t the only way bookstores have remained afloat. The most successful bookstores tend to be those than can carve their own special niche. For example, large-footprint independent bookstores like Fangsuo and Yanjiyou in China have turned their businesses into cultural hubs where people can come together for events and encounter non-book merchandise; they are places to discover new ideas that are not suggested by algorithms. In Boston, one of America’s oldest bookstores, Brattle Books, has been running a book-themed podcast since 2017, bring together Boston’s bibliophilic community.
Rhode Island-based Twenty Stories, on the other hand, takes a thoughtful, minimal approach. Its two owners hand-select 20 titles each month, making the experience feel particularly personal. The store also operates a “bookmobile”—a 1987 Chevy van that pops up in different locations on weekends. The Last Bookstore, L.A.’s iconic used bookshop housed in a former bank, started offering curated book bundles based on customers’ interests and renting out their highly instagramable space for weddings and small events. News & Coffee finds success in “a simple idea with perfect execution.” The owners transformed former newsstands in Barcelona into open-air bars where people can grab independent magazines, books, and coffee to go, or hang out in the green space nearby.
As more people become conscious local shoppers, bookstores that find a way to weave their identity into the local fabric will likely achieve sustained market growth.
Sources: Harvard Business School | The New York Times | WIRED (April 27, 2020) | Image: Fangsuo