Praveen Mavdan and Christin Evans, owners for the past two years of the Booksmith in San Francisco, are writing a series of weekly articles on the Huffington Post about their experiences running the store and, most importantly, their efforts to make the store competitive in a “changed habitat,” the bookselling market.
Their most recent article, “Evolve or Die,” first spells out the familiar dismal story about independents closing year after year, and then spells out their reasons for believing that now is a time of great opportunity for independent bookselling.
They argue that there are many ways in which independent bookstores have the potential to provide experiences superior to what their competitors provide. In the realm of literary community building, they observe that
Technology is enabling more and more people to work from home and shop from home and in the process creating a huge unmet need for people to find venues where they can meet and talk with other people. We are social animals and all of us crave meaningful social interaction. Independent bookstores should find new ways to bring people together to talk about books and ideas.
Apart from community-building, Madan and Evans also consider author services, the browsing experience (the last major innovation in the bookstore browsing experience, they claim, was the installation of comfortable seating and cafe areas), the barely-glimpsed potential of in-store print on demand, and the presence of untapped markets. “Only half of adult Americans read books,” the authors write. Television reaches 97% and the Internet reaches 75%, so “why have we, as an industry, settled for only 50% penetration”?
The article concludes with some sensible words:
We have a few years to build a new business model that will enable us to continue spreading the love of long-form reading and critical thinking to people. We must not obsess about the fake battle between print and e-books, but focus instead on literacy, diversity, dialog, and community engagement — all of which are real issues despite all the advancements in technology. […] Sure, we are having an existential crisis right now. But remember we are fighting the thousand year war against ignorance, closed minds, and a homogenized culture.
They promise their next article will describe what exactly they’ve been doing in response to these challenges.
