Your Local Independent Bookstore Needs You Far More Than Amazon Does This Christmas

This is the time of year that will make or break some of them

Christmas is less than three weeks away and some of you have been running your Amazon delivery driver ragged since before Thanksgiving while others still haven’t realized it’s December yet. Whichever category you fall into, there is one business you need to make sure you support this holiday season: your local independent bookstore. It’s true at any time of year, but whereas Amazon will be fine missing out on a few orders, for that local bookstore this is the most important month of the year.

There was a lot of focus on helping those bookstores survive during the worst of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, but since things have returned to whatever our new normal is, they have fallen off most people’s radar. Inflation and the spike in food, fuel, and housing costs has impacted them significantly as well; many are buying fewer books, considering them a “luxury” when they are, in fact, a necessity. And in tight economic times, a book is a gift that is actually affordable.

What most don’t realize is that even in the best of times, bookstores operate on razor-thin margins; the Christmas season often determines whether they will turn a profit for the year or not and in some cases whether they will even still be in business in the new year. We lament the loss of our bookstores, but are we doing what we can to prevent that loss? This Christmas, you can.

First, avoid the tendency almost everyone has to make books a last-minute gift idea. I experienced this firsthand in my own bookstore; things were shockingly quiet until three days before Christmas and then all hell broke loose. The problem was that those three days of hell were not enough to translate into a heavenly season with regard to sales.

If your “local” store is some distance away, as has become common as more stores have closed, ordering online for Christmas delivery needs to be done now; they don’t have the ability to offer same-day shipping the way other retail behemoths do. Don’t wait until the 18th of December to decide your mom needs that awesome hardcover collection of Jane Austen novels; at that point Amazon is your only option. But I would go one step further and say forget ordering online and go into the store; bookstores are magical places and true refuges in these troubled times, as I wrote about here.

If you are fortunate enough to live near great indie bookstores, visiting in person is easy to do. Readers in Denver, Ann Arbor, and Athens (GA) can easily stop by, respectively, The Tattered Cover, Literati, or Avid Bookshop and shop in person. But what if, like me, you are 25 miles or more from the nearest indie bookstore? Easy: make a special trip.

I realize that especially after the lockdowns of a few years ago we’ve become accustomed to having everything from food to cat litter to books delivered directly to our door by truck, bike, or drone. Some of us (myself included) have become hermits to a degree that would make the desert monks of old proud. But if we want those bookstores to still be there not just for us but for our children and grandchildren, we need to support them during their most crucial time of the year.

There are a lot of sound economic reasons for supporting these and other independent retailers. Numerous studies have found that local stores reinvest more of their sales revenue in their local communities than corporate chains; they also hire more local labor since management functions are done on-site rather than at a corporate headquarters in another state. They spend roughly twice as much as chains at other local businesses (they bank locally, hire local accountants, attorneys, designers, and other professionals, advertise in local media, and when possible order inventory from local firms). Finally, on average local retailers donate more to local charities and community organizations than chain stores do.

If you’re a book lover, however, it goes much deeper than economic impact. If you have spent any amount of time in an indie bookstore, you know that the connection between book buyer and bookseller goes far beyond the surface level of a shared love of books; it often becomes a friendship. Indie bookstores also invite us to do something most of us just don’t do anymore: slow down. We browse the titles; we linger, and at the best of times we find something we’ve never seen before, that we weren’t even looking for, that presents itself at just the right moment; that’s what books do.

Because the books are bought by the owner rather than some centralized corporate office and are often recommended by customers, an independent bookstore takes on the character of its local community and its local patrons. Even with their recent shift in focus, a Barnes & Noble in Dallas is still virtually identical to one in Sacramento or Boston or Atlanta. By contrast, every indie bookstore is unique. They take risks, often just in order to survive, and risk has rewards. It is far more fun to carry that collection of short stories by a new Danish author than stocking yet another James Patterson novel that you can get at any Wal-Mart.

The books on offer at your local indie bookstore can also change how you interact with the world; I have seen it happen. I’ve watched in silent satisfaction as a 60-year-old lifelong conservative held a 25-minute discussion with a 19-year-old hardcore liberal about the wonders of Roberto Bolano’s The Savage Detectives without a single raised voice. We live in a world today where if you disagree even the smallest amount politically you not only can’t be friends, you basically have to hate each other. Finding common ground is rare, and wonderful when it happens.

In a bookstore, finding common ground with someone isn’t the exception; it’s the rule. If you can connect with someone on something you care about as much as books, you are far more likely to see them as a person rather than an adversary, no matter how much you may disagree on other things. It’s only a start, but nowadays any start is a good thing.

Independent bookstores offer all of this and so much more. You give the bookseller the equivalent of what it costs for an enchilada dinner and, as Christopher Morley wrote in Parnassus on Wheels, they give you back “twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue that contain an entire world.” In the best case, you also get a real relationship with a real person at the same time. Surely that’s worth driving a few extra miles.

So support your local indie bookstore this Christmas. They sell more than some just random product that will be forgotten by New Years Eve. They sell magic and dreams, all wrapped up in a small package of ink and paper. There’s no better Christmas gift than that.

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