A couple of weeks ago the San Francisco Retail Diversity Study was released. The goal was “to provide consumers and policy makers with an understanding of the economic benefits of redirecting spending from chains to independents.”
The study, sponsored in part by the American Booksellers Association (ABA), concluded that ” independent retailers as a whole — bring far more economic value to their communities than do chain stores.”
This is far from rocket science. Owners of independent businesses tend to live in or around the communities in which their business operates while the corporate chain store tends to feed the minimum wage to the locals who work there while siphoning off the real money for their shareholders who don’t give a damn where a store is located as long at it makes money. Then you throw in the online e-tailers who gobble up the dollars from the community and replace it with cardboard boxes and shipping airbags.
Here is what the study found spending 10% more at the local independent will do:
It “would result in an increased economic input of approximately $3.8 million, 25 additional jobs, $1.3 million in new income for workers, and almost $325,000 in additional retail activity.
Only a subtle shift would make a difference.
Also, what the study does not include is the economic impact of local independent used bookshops.
What about when some of those new books flooding the community from the chains and online e-tailers are sold to the local independent used bookshops?
Well, it puts money in the pockets of the people who sell the book and when the book is sold it puts money in the state’s pocket through sales tax (selling your books to Half-Price Books doesn’t count because they are a chain based in Texas and the money they offer for your books borders on criminal).
The other measurement needing some exploration is the social and creative costs of the disappearing independent bookstore.
Jed Birmingham’s recent piece “Burroughs and Bookstores” over at RealityStudio, the all things William Burroughs website, illuminates the role of many independent bookshops. Feeding off of Bill Reed’s memoir Early Plastic Birmingham says “independent bookstores are key locales in a creative community.”
“Part employment office, soup kitchen, flophouse, café, and publishing house, the bookstore functions as a communal center like the American Express office in Paris, the barber shop in Harlem, or the general store on Main Street. The role of the bookstore in literary history remains to be explored in full…to my mind, the independent bookstore is an essential institution, one needed for a healthy and happy existence.”
RealityStudio also features an expanded version of the chapter in Reed’s book Early Plaster that deals with the legendery Eighth Street Bookshop in Greenwich Village. A bookstore that was home to the counterculture of the 1960’s and 70’s. It was fertile ground for the early Beats and is also where the influential Corinth/Totem Press originated.
Reed says:
“Staggering through the aisles of today’s giant bookstores, it’s hard not to imagine that most of the merchandise won’t eventually find its way to the nearest Jersey landfill rather than a reader’s night table.”
“Bookstores used to just sell books. And just as importantly, they offered useful information, something nearly impossible to glean from today’s post-literate, cradle-to-grave-minimum-wage chain store clerk.”
They were “social and cultural gathering-places where literature took precedence over lattes.”
Amen.
Photo by Robert Otter