How do you work in an empty bookstore? (Misshelved #2)
At the beginning of the month, I drafted most of an essay on the state of young adult publishing and how we failed its actual target demographic. I did research. I sent it to my friend and BookPage editor Stephanie Appell to help strengthen it. I planned on exploring the history of young adult literature, where it went wrong in speaking to a teen readership in the past few years, and how it can get back on track.
Then COVID-19 forced New York into quarantine. Publishing ground to a halt.
And my job became very, very strange.
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Three weeks ago, before we were mandated to do so, Oblong Books & Music shut its doors to the public. Our original plan was to try to continue to schedule and pay staff as usual while we judged where New York would be in two weeks.
Within two days, we realized that plan was impossible. This wasn’t going to last two weeks. This wasn’t going to last a month.
This was going to last for a while, and with the small margins of an independent bookstore, we couldn’t afford to keep everybody on—not if we wanted them to have a job when this was all over. The bookstore couldn’t survive the lack of foot traffic. It couldn’t survive the lack of tourists.
Oblong has two bookstores. One is in Millerton. One is in Rhinebeck. (If you’re unfamiliar with the Hudson Valley, this is about 45 minutes apart.) For the past two weeks, only three non-owners have been working to keep them functional: the manager of the Millerton store, our events and social media manager, and the manager of the Rhinebeck store (me).
Of my two owners, one gave up their paycheck to help keep us employed and threw their time into helping Millerton’s small business association. The other cut their paycheck while managing web orders and publisher contacts to help keep the three of us employed.
Everybody else is gone.
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With Governor Cuomo’s mandate for all non-essential businesses to shut down two weeks ago, we’re allowed only one person in each physical bookstore. From Monday through Friday, the Millerton manager and I answer the phone and pack up web orders alone.
I know how incredibly lucky I am. My bosses are generous, thoughtful, and forward-thinking. They’ve made a point to reach out to our temporarily unemployed booksellers on a weekly basis to see what they need and how they’re doing. They make sure that they can afford to pay the three managers still working so that we can afford our health insurance and our rent and our groceries. Orders are coming in at a steady rate, which enables them to keep paying us our full salaries as we do our work.
But gosh, life is weird.
Putting aside my anxiety disorder—which is, of course, through the roof; and isn’t it fun that anxiety attacks and COVID-19 share the same “tight chest” symptom?—and my understandable concern for my talented, trapped-at-home staff, there is something strange about an empty bookstore.
Reading a book is a solitary experience, unique to the reader. Nobody can read a book the way that you read it, when you read it.
But books themselves? They are a culture. They are a group activity. You want to talk about what you read. You want to recommend it to others if you liked it, or gossip about it if you didn’t. You want to hear what other readers are reading, what they want to read, how it plays into their everyday life.
Stories create community.
I always considered myself an introvert, but I currently cling to the moments where our (exhausted, but still smiling) delivery folks arrive at my door, letting me chat with them from six feet away. I blast podcasts while I pack up shipments so that my voice isn’t the only one in the store. I start my day excited to get to work and see what people have ordered, to see if they picked some of my favorites, to see if I recognize any names of the people ordering.
By the end of the day, I am as exhausted as if I’d spent the whole day exercising.
Bookstores are not meant to be empty.
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So what happens next? What happens to bookstores? To publishing? To books? To the communities that spring up around them?
I don’t know.
Will publishing finally realize that they cannot invest so much in Amazon when Amazon will declare books “non-essential” at the drop of a hat? Will the independent bookstores across this country survive when small businesses have been forced to close? What happens if Barnes & Noble collapses, eroding the publishing hierarchy as we know it even further? When will delayed books be released ? How many books will be cancelled, postponed, changed? How many authors will suffer? How many publishing imprints will be forced to tighten their belts and lay off staff? How many kids without books will fall behind in their educations? How many communities will lose their bookstores, their libraries, the few places they can gather to find stories? Will book groups survive switching to digital? Will they spring up, renewed and reinvigorated, in four-six-nine-twelve months?
What happens to books after a pandemic?
I don’t know.
What I have right now is hope: at times utterly overwhelming, at times so flimsy that I have to cling to it with everything I have before it fades into oblivion.
Right now, when it matters most, people have turned to books and stories for comfort. Right now, when it matters most, people have championed their independent bookstores. Right now, when it matters most, people are doing what is right—both by quarantining themselves and by thinking locally.
Will it last? I don’t know. But gosh, I hope so.
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The world is about to change. The world is changing. Stories will change. Publishing will change. Bookstores will change.
You will change.
I will change.
I don’t know what it means yet. I hate that change has come on the backs of underappreciated healthcare workers, on the risks of underappreciated retail workers and delivery drivers, on the deaths of those who the government did not move fast enough to protect. But change is here.
Some of it might be good, if we fight for it. A bigger awareness of the power of local communities. A bigger appreciation for stories and those who create and champion them. A bigger love for the communities that kept us sane.
All I know is that I’m going to keep fighting to make the world better. And I’m going to keep working to get you the stories you need.
Be well. Stay safe. Wash your hands. Hope is a discipline. You can do this.
And, as always: happy reading.
Nicole Brinkley has short hair and loves dragons. The rest changes without notice. She is the manager of Oblong Books and the co-chair of the New England Children’s Bookselling Advisory Council. Her opinions are her own. If you like this newsletter, consider supporting her on Patreon.
This essay was copyedited by Stephanie Appell. Read more of Stephanie's work at bookpage.com, where she is the children's and YA editor, or say hi on Twitter @noseinabookgirl. Her opinions are also her own, except regarding serial commas, when they are facts.