Unintended Consequences

Today, I found out that an e-mail I sent to the writer of a newspaper article has become fairly wide-spread on the internet. While odd, it isn't a bad thing. Just odd.

Last week, The Seattle Times had a story about the closing of another Seattle independent bookshop. M.Coy is north of us, in the higher rent district of the department stores. Many factors go into their closing but I wrote to the author of the piece, Michael Upchurch, about how only the closing of small bookshops gets coverage, not the success of them:

Michael - While I was sorry to read your article in this morning's Times that M.Coy will be closing, I was once again disturbed by the tone. The local media is quick to mark the demise of an independent bookshop and say once again how it is nearly impossible for a small independent to survive. Difficult, sure. But not impossible. When we moved our shop, the Seattle Mystery Bookshop, over the Memorial Day weekend in 2005, we sent out a press release saying how here was a story about a small, independent bookshop that was doing so well that it could move to a larger space after 15 years and no one in the local press paid any attention. Two and a half years later, business is terrific; 2007 was our best year yet, a 6.5% increase in sales over 2006.

Michael Coy is a great bookseller. He was one of my instructors when I was sent to the American Bookseller's Association's Bookseller's School in Portland, years ago. He's a savvy businessman. But the economic forces on his shop - his location in a high-rent area of downtown, his particular landlord, the fact that the shop is a general bookshop - do not automatically translate onto every other independent bookseller.

If you want to know how independent booksellers really are doing, come ask us. Reacting to the closing of one bookshop by saying it is another death-knell of an industry simply isn't fair or correct and can be counterproductive. It can also mislead customers and drive more into the hands of the corporate Big Boxes, encouraging the difficulties that small independents face. Why not do a story about how some independents are doing fine BECAUSE of their customers who WANT to support small businesses? Isn't there a story in that?

Again, I am sad to hear the M.Coy is closing and that another small bookseller is leaving the scene. But I wish the local press, you included, would pay as much attention to those booksellers who are doing well, surviving and succeeding.

Happy New Year. JB Dickey, owner of the Seattle Mystery Bookshop

A couple of days later, I got a reply to my e-mail from the book editor, Mary Ann Gwinn:

Hello: is it okay if we print your estimable letter (below) about the bookstore-closes story in an upcoming Sunday arts section?

Many thanks Mary Ann Gwinn Seattle Times book editor

While flattered that they might have thought my arguments had weight, I sent this reply:

Mary Ann - I didn't write the letter to Michael as a "letter to the editor", so I'm not comfortable letting it be printed for the public. I'd say no.

I would highly recommend that my points be taken further by the Times. There are many small independents who are obviously doing alright. None of us are getting rich, but in this state alone a good story could be done on Auntie's in Spokane, Village in Bellingham, and Queen Anne Books, Magnolia and us here in Seattle to just name a few. Stories are done on bookshops closing. Why aren't there any done on bookshops that stay open?

Well, somehow, my original 'letter' to Michael was posted on the Seattle Times website, though it was not printed in the Sunday paper. From there, it was picked up by Publisher's Lunch and by Shelfaware. Who knows where the ricochets will take it. It really doesn't matter that it was printed except that I don't want this to be about just this bookshop.

For years, at least in Seattle, the local media seems to have only pay attention to an independent bookshop when it closes. Not all do. But by continuing to do stories only about the sad death of an independent and not the throbbing life of the others, the media is perhaps contributing to the problems we all face. If you only report that things are hard for independents and they're sinking like unstable rafts, doesn't this encourage readers, buyers, and customers to continue moving away from independents and into the maws of the Big Box stores? And, as more and more buyers are driven to them and the percentage of their sales of books grows, the publishers are put further and further into their debt - and that means less selection (if the chains don't want it, it doesn't get published), higher prices (the high price of books can, to some degree, be put down to the built-in discounts that chains and price clubs give) and a greater concentration of power over the publishers by fewer outlets. None of that is good for readers, or writers or our shared culture. So my original argument in my e-mail to Michael remains: why doesn't the media pay attention to bookshops that are open for business? Instead of being the chronicler of a problem, why not be an assistant to a solution?

JB