WordWacky

This Sunday’s Seattle Times had a sad tale about my city’s bookstores:

Seattle has more bookstores per capita than any other city in the country, according to the “America’s Most Literate Cities” survey conducted by Jack Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University — 174 at last count. But running a bookstore has always been an occupation for dreamers, and area independent stores have had to confront the realities of wresting a living from a low-margin business in an increasingly expensive town.

M Coy Books, on Pine Street between First and Second avenues in the Pike Place Market neighborhood, could not survive a major rent increase. All for Kids Books in the University Village area, a treasured children’s bookstore, closed down this summer. Jackson Street Books at the corner of Jackson Street and 23rd Avenue, specializing in African-American literature, science fiction and other genres, shuttered its Seattle operation this spring. In Kirkland, Parkplace Books resorted to a campaign for donations from its fans and customers to avoid closing its doors.

I refuse to surrender the neighborhood bookstore as another idea whose day has passed. Here are some success stories from bookstores who have recently fought to stay alive, despite the “business is down, rent’s up” story that seems all too common these days.

Fundraise

You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. This old truism may be cliché, but it’s also true. Faced with seeing their beloved neighborhood bookshop close, many residents are willing to put a few dollars into the bookstore. Maybe a bookstore isn’t non-profit, but often the profits are none.

As mentioned in the Seattle Times story, Parkplace books did just that to keep their business going. So did Wordsmith Books in Decatur, Georgia – they recently led a successful fundraising campaign. From their blog:

We have reached the end of our two week campaign to save the bookstore. From August 4th through August 17th, we asked for your help. We asked for the chance to take this business and turn it forward, to get out from under the weight of immediate costs that were threatening to close our doors forever and begin the task of paying down debts that were accrued in our original location. And you responded. Our call for help hit the AJC, was broadcast on NPR, was rehashed and debated on countless blogs, commented on, emailed about and discussed in bookstores throughout the country. We received help from 18 states, Canada, and a handful of people in the U.K.

Relocate

Little Professor Bookstore in Fenton, Michigan moved downtown to avoid the rising prices in the shopping center where they made their home for 12 years.

Carpenter said she is paying significantly less rent for smaller quarters at 150 W. Shiawassee Ave. — a few doors down from the popular French Laundry restaurant.

She sees other advantages.

“There’s more foot traffic downtown,” Carpenter said. “It’s not like you can walk from Wal-Mart to my store. And where we were located, it was hard to see our signs from the road.”

Sell

Sometimes new energy can be just what a burned out bookseller needs. Just because you may be through with the never-ending race of sales versus bills and rent doesn’t mean that someone else isn’t willing to step up and take the baton.

As mentioned earlier on Wordwacky, another option when faced with imminent demise is to sell the shop. The Amazon Bookstore in Minneapolis was saved this year when someone stepped up and bought it – after the closing sale had already happened.

Then last week, Skujin’s partner ran into Barb at a concert, who told her the 38-year-old store had lowered its price but had not found a buyer, and was now in its final days. “I called Barb the next day, we met last Thursday, came to an agreement, shook on it, and I still can’t believe it, but I own a bookstore,” said Skujin.

Go Virtual

In Culpepper, Virginia, one bookseller’s decision when faced with closing up shop was to expand his web presence. The 32 year-old Corner Shelf Bookstore will close this month, to be replaced by only a website. But according to the Free Lance-Star, the bookstore won’t lose its personal touch.

Those who don’t like to shop online will be able to call Gordon Dickerson using the same telephone number the shop has had since it opened in August 1976: 540/825-4411.

And customers will have three options for receiving their books. Dickerson says he will mail them to whatever address you want (postage will apply, of course) or you can prepay and the books will be left at the Raven’s Nest Coffee Shop on East Davis Street. Dickerson has even worked out an arrangement with the Raven’s Nest’s owner to hold author book-signings at the coffee shop.

Next time: Some ideas around opening, not closing a bookstore, even now…

Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fiction in which a writer is the protagonist bores me. Faulting the author for too little imagination, I imagine the protagonist to be an ill-veiled version of the real person, the author. Indeed, the protagonist of Diary of a Bad Year is a writer, a writer who is perhaps named Juan C. (The author’s name is John Maxwell, or J. M. Coetzee.)

That’s my own personal bias, not any kind of objective truth — but here’s another piece of much more reputable advice that this book ignores. Don’t build a book around your political agenda. Not only does Coetzee do this, he does it completely blatantly, with little narrative intertwined.

The protagonist has contracted with a German publisher to contribute to a collection of of six authors’ “Strong Opinions.” Those opinions, such as “On Language,” and “On Intelligent Design,” are short non-fiction passages from an old man to the world he finds himself living within.

About assigning the opinions of Señor C to Coetzee, The New Yorker says this:

Many of the protagonist’s essays are reproduced in the novel we are reading. Naturally, the reader wants to make Coetzee’s novels confessional, to claim these opinions as his rightful children. But Coetzee explicitly complicates the question of his paternity, so that these books read less like confessions than like books about confession.

This is an idea I consider, but at best I see Señor C as a self-conscious exaggeration of the author, not as being of an entirely different character than the man who created him. As Coetzee is notoriously reclusive, we may never know how closely the two resemble each other.

But there’s something else much more compelling in the book’s structure. Below each page of the writer’s “Strong Opinions” is a footnote of sorts, finally the narrative we need to hold our interest through this barrage of editorial. The story that surrounds the writing of the opinions is told by the writer, in the first person.

And both are good. Both are engaging, and if we prefer the narrative (which is generally limited in page real estate to less than a third, and often ends leaving white space), we are soon rewarded with more — a third section on each page representing our romantic-platonic leading lady, also told in the first person.

About the opinions I won’t say much, except that I agreed with many, including some harsher reviews of our American Empire. What’s very interesting in the reading of the book is that depending on the story that is taking place, the opinions seem more or less valid — as you grow to know the writer, your opinion of his opinions changes and adjusts. Ultimately, you are left to miss the author’s narrative voice altogether, left with only his opinions and those of Anya, his typist. Could this be the demise of us all, survived only by our strongest opinions and others’ somewhat misinformed ideas about us?

Reading this book is an experience I recommend. Its engaging, lively structure contains a story of its own.

View all my reviews.