Are Co-Op Bookstores the Future of Bookselling?

Bookstores are extra than simply locations to purchase books. They’re facilities of their communities, locations for deep and perspective-shifting conversations, and native companies that give again to their neighborhoods. Building a flourishing bookstore enterprise, nevertheless, is difficult. The price of opening a bookstore — significantly in a bustling neighborhood with good foot visitors — may be astronomical. Booksellers are extremely specialised employees anticipated to have a broad data base however are usually paid low wages. Profit margins are notoriously skinny, thanks partly to the incontrovertible fact that publishers print instructed pricing immediately on the product on the market. And the rise in huge on-line low cost sellers and digital books has made the future of bookselling look bleak.

But someway, booksellers hold combating again. When the coronavirus pandemic threatened every kind of brick-and-mortar small companies, bookstores tailored by providing curbside pickup, supply, and out of doors pop-up choices. Readers rallied round their group shops and fought to maintain them open. And bookstores are actually experiencing one thing of a growth. More than 300 new bookstores have opened since 2020, many of these shops owned by BIPOC booksellers.

Still, bookstores should look towards the future to beat the ever-looming risk of Amazon and different opponents. Bookstores are looking for methods to maintain their doorways open whereas paying booksellers a residing wage and stocking books related to their communities. During a wave of organizing for labor rights all over the place, from the movie trade in L.A. to the auto trade in Detroit, booksellers are additionally combating for higher pay and employee protections. Another answer an increasing number of bookstores are exploring is co-operative possession buildings. I spoke with three co-op bookstores in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Kansas to learn the way transferring towards a cooperative mannequin has formed their companies and the way it would possibly affect the future of bookselling.

Caine builds a compelling case in How to Resist Amazon and Why about how the behemoth firm damages communities, collects regarding quantities of information, and erodes the ebook trade from all sides. But in his new ebook, How to Protect Bookstores and Why, Caine is extra enthusiastic about discovering options to the issues created by Amazon and different threats to small bookstores.

“I spent so many years of my life thinking about the wrong way to do business and how workers are getting dehumanized and mistreated, and how the dignity of work is disappearing or maybe was never even really there, in our industry and in industries that touch our industry,” Caine shared in an interview with Book Riot. “The whistleblower is an important role, but that’s not really where I see myself. I’m interested in solutions, even on a small scale.”

To discover these options, Caine interviewed homeowners and booksellers at 12 bookstores throughout the nation to learn the way they’re supporting their communities and protecting their doorways open. Each chapter focuses on a unique bookstore, together with explicit issues dealing with that retailer and methods individuals inside and outdoors the ebook trade might help.

“I didn’t want to come from a point where I was patting myself on the back for doing a good job at the Raven, so I didn’t write about the store,” Caine mentioned. “What’s much more interesting for me as a writer is to write about other stores, to be an observer and learn and take inspiration from the folks I was talking to. From there, I knew I wanted a good mix of stores, different types of stores. We’ve got employee-owned co-ops, stores that are nonprofits, Black-owned stores, Indigenous stores. I don’t think there is one answer to what community bookselling looks like, and I wanted the selection of stores in the book to reflect that. I didn’t set out with a set of conclusions. I really asked myself a question and let the interview subjects push me toward the book’s conclusion.”

How to Protect Bookstores and Why is a fast and interesting learn, whether or not you’re a seasoned bookseller or just somebody who loves purchasing at your native bookstore. But whereas studying the ebook and listening to Caine discuss his personal bookselling experiences, I used to be significantly enthusiastic about the steps he’s taken at his retailer.

Caine was a part-time bookseller at the Raven when the homeowners put the retailer up on the market in 2017, and he bought it. He’s skilled the problem of constructing a bookseller-to-owner pipeline firsthand. That’s why, in January 2022, Caine offered 49% of shares in the enterprise to seven of his skilled and passionate booksellers, turning the Raven Book Store into an employee-owned cooperative. And figuring out how laborious it may be to entry capital as a bookseller, Caine loaned them the funds to speculate.

“The book industry has a problem where talented young booksellers can’t form a career,” Caine mentioned. “It’s not lucrative enough, or there aren’t enough good jobs where people want to stick around. Even at the Raven, can we make four or five good jobs? Can we retain a good, talented core of booksellers who are interested in bookstore ownership but don’t have the capital to do it? We started having discussions. I talked to Porter Square Books about how they did it. I did some research into co-ops and what it would take to implement this kind of thing. Based on our situation, and the folks who were interested, we arrived at this model that we borrowed from Porter Square. It works for us, and I would hope other people are looking at alternative ownership models or innovative succession plans or how to empower workers, how to let people buy into businesses without having a ton of cash on hand.”

Red Emma’s is a radical bookstore, restaurant, and occasion area in Baltimore, Maryland that has operated as a employee cooperative since opening in 2004. It’s one of the 12 bookstores featured in How to Protect Bookstores and Why, and after studying about the retailer, I reached out to ask them about their co-op construction.

“Brick and mortar bookstores — at their best — have always been about personal connection to their readers and an organizational connection to their community,” mentioned John Duda, a founding worker-owner of Red Emma’s. “Those kinds of connections are really what makes a bookstore more than just a retail enterprise, and is really the only thing that gives them a shot against the efficiency of online fulfillment from the megaplatforms. Being a worker cooperative means that everyone slinging books has the opportunity to be deeply invested in creating and stewarding these connections.”

Every worker-owner at Red Emma’s owns an equal share of the enterprise, and selections are made by group consensus. This mannequin has labored for the retailer for nearly 20 years. Additionally, they’re spreading the phrase about co-op possession to different companies in Baltimore, like advising employees at an area espresso store that abruptly closed to assist them reopen as a co-op. They additionally imagine the co-op mannequin is one thing different bookstores round the nation ought to contemplate.

“Bookselling, as a relatively small, relatively less-capital-intensive sector, with a heavy dependency on the skill and knowledge of its workers, is a really good fit for cooperative worker ownership, and especially as more sole proprietors look for an exit, it’s likely we’ll see more conversions,” mentioned Duda. “When we started out in 2004, for the most part, there wasn’t the kind of widespread infrastructure for making and helping finance worker cooperatives that we see today, which means that while we had to blunder through a lot on our own, today there’s a lot more resources to leverage, which should make start up co-op projects and transitions to cooperative ownership a lot easier.”

Today, bookstores contemplating cooperative possession actually profit from the perspective of different shops. “We couldn’t have done the ownership change without talking to other stores, absolutely,” mentioned Danny Caine about the Raven’s transition. “I think that’s one of the great things about the book industry is how willing people are to talk and share secrets with you and help each other out. I’ve never had a bookseller be like, ‘No, I’m not going to tell you that, I’m not going to help you with this.’ Not only that decision but many other decisions we’ve made are made in consultation with other folks that we admire and trust in the industry.”

“The cooperative model creates shared profitability, allowing more people to participate in the local economy,” mentioned Talia Whyte, a worker-owner at Rozzie Bound. “We became a hybrid co-op because it is more financially sustainable for us. Also, we wanted to give community members a more substantive way to support the bookstore beyond just buying a book from us occasionally. Many people these days say they want to support independent bookstores, so we are giving them an easy way to do that.”

Many of Rozzie Bound’s consumer-owners take part in the ebook ambassador committee that coordinates with the native library, selects authors for occasions, and runs the retailer’s ebook golf equipment. Consumer-owners are anticipated to assist promote the retailer and encourage new clients to hitch them. “We have strong ties with the local community and want to continue strengthening them,” Whyte mentioned. “When a co-op does well financially, the community served by the co-op also benefits.”

John Duda was stunned by “just how much unlearning people have to do in order to be able to work together collectively in a democratic manner” at Red Emma’s. “This should be a basic life skill, but really very little of anyone’s formal education or more mainstream work experience in our society prepares them for actually being in shared control of their own workplace.”

“There may be a learning curve for someone who is going from employee to worker-owner and doesn’t have business management or ownership experience,” mentioned Talia Whyte of Rozzie Bound. “Owning a bookstore takes a considerable amount of time, money, and resources, and you have to be willing to learn a lot quickly and be proactive in running your business. If someone is thinking about becoming a cooperative or opening a bookstore for the first time, get the relevant experience first and bring on like-minded people who can help you make your cooperative business a reality.”

For some co-op bookstores, the difficulties of working a cooperative enterprise in a late-stage-capitalist world are too nice. Seminary Co-op Bookstores, after 58 years as a co-op, transitioned to a not-for-profit mannequin in 2019. “Effectively, we have not been a co-op for a long time,” bookstore management mentioned at the time of the change. “Although the co-op structure made sense for the time in which it was established, given changes in the market and the way the bookstores operate, the co-op model does not confer any benefit today and, in fact, creates additional burdens that do not serve our mission.”

After years of governance struggles, problem working below Illinois state legislation, and shrinking income, Seminary Co-op made the change with the assist of their group and a dedication to keep up the retailer’s tradition and group worth. Their shift to a not-for-profit mannequin in an trade that has grow to be much less worthwhile over many years “announces our intentions to provide cultural, literary, and communal value,” mentioned Clancey D’Isa, Director of Strategy and Development at Seminary Co-op. “It has also allowed us to articulate better the daily work that goes into providing an unparalleled experience of discovery in our stores. Maintaining a space dedicated to books is the most valuable thing we do, and the variable skills and expertise that go into that stewardship are worthy of recognition and celebration.”

“Our model presents us with the continued opportunity to narrate the value of our work to stakeholders while acknowledging the critical challenges facing our trade,” mentioned D’Isa to Book Riot about their transfer away from a co-op construction. “These challenges and the financial realities of operating a bookstore are not easy, and we remain buoyed by the brilliant ways so many bookstores are imagining their futures. The not-for-profit model is but one avenue. For our stores, which have always sought to be a space of book-based discovery, the not-for-profit model allows us to continue to privilege and strive for that aim: to be, above all else, a bookstore.”

“One of the wonderful things about bookstores and the difficult things about bookstores is that these are places that are all deeply rooted in their communities, and all their communities are different,” mentioned Danny Caine. “As much as the forces of capitalism want to level everything into this homogenized corporate version of the public square, communities still hang on to their uniqueness, and so do their bookstores. I don’t think there’s one solution for everything. I think the broad solution for bookstores isn’t necessarily our brand of community ownership. I’m not even sure it’s the right solution for us. It’s an experiment, we’re working through it. But I do think asking the question and dreaming big is important. Books, a bookstore, it reminds people of certain aspects of the past. I think that’s okay, but not to get stuck in that, to be open to conversations about innovations that can bring bookstores into the future, a willingness to be curious about it, I think that’s a solution.”

But to Caine, “independent” is an advanced phrase in bookselling regardless of whether or not shops perform as co-op, for-profit, or not-for-profit companies. “I think ‘independent’ is a useful term, especially when we say we’re independent of corporate bookselling or independent of Amazon,” mentioned Caine. “But I think it runs into a risk when we become independent from each other. Not only bookstores from other bookstores, but are the bosses independent from the workers, and vice versa? I would hate for us to take the independent notion so far that we lose the notion of collectivity. Because that’s one of the easiest ways that corporations can defeat us and make us feel like we’re alone or small. When you feel lonely or small, it’s that much easier to give up. But when you feel a sense of connection or solidarity or collectivity, and you feel like your problems are shared by so many other inspiring people in your community and your industry, then you find strength from that.”

To be taught extra about the issues dealing with at the moment’s bookstores and what you are able to do to assist them, I extremely suggest studying How to Protect Bookstores and Why from Microcosm Publishing. You can discover a listing of co-op bookstores to assist on Rozzie Bound’s web site.