REX TILLERSON DID CORRECTLY CALL THE PRESIDENT AS HE SAW HIM

 IS THE LOCAL INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE AN EXTINCT ANIMAL?

 

                                      …a flourishing, local bookstore in New York

 

Fortunately, independent bookstores today are enjoying a surge of business

 

As we all know, most local book stores have become extinct.  Let’s face it, Jeff Bezos’ Amazon ate most of them, and the Internet apparently snuffed the rest. 

However, don’t tell that to the owners and customers of Yu & Me Books, Readers Block, Libros Bookmobile, Kindred Stories and more than 300 other new, independent bookstores.  They have cropped up like beautiful wildflowers in nearly every state in the last couple of years. Many have been launched by women and non-white booksellers, often specializing in titles by and about the wide diversity of people usually overlooked by the conglomerate publishers.  Independent bookstores have re-born themselves by focusing on their neighborhoods.

American Book Sellers, an advocacy group for independents on: BookWeb.org, they report that these upstarts are flourishing, enjoying a surge of readers and profits.  Their success is a direct result of their local uniqueness, creative outreach, and simple openness by offering a welcome gathering spot, in a cold commercial world that increasingly disdains most human touches.  “It really is a de facto community space” says one devotee of Yu and Me Books, located in Manhattan’s Chinatown.  “I don’t think we realized we needed a bookstore, until we had one.”

I will say however, my large, local, corporate Barnes & Noble bookstore has great crowds every day. 

It just goes to show that people will seek-out what they want to read, regardless of whether they are independent bookstores, or Amazon or ???

Copyright G. Ater 2022