By Sally Read

I went back to the bookstore last week, after three weeks of working exclusively from home. It’s strange, to say the least. Strange to be back among the stacks, the couches, the cafe tables. Strange to glance into the playhouse or climb the squeaky ladder to search through backstock.

 

The store is in this suspended state – like all of us, I guess. It hangs between beauty and necessity. What makes a bookstore beautiful, what makes it useful to the public, is not always the same thing that makes it useful to the crisis-bookseller. A beautiful bookstore draws you in. It invites browsing – with thoughtfully-written rec cards and impeccably-themed display tables. It inspires new ideas. The beauty of a bookstore is in the emotional connection between people and books, people and coffee, people and people. 

The necessities of bookselling-in-the-time-of-coronoa are different. Those beautiful displays? They’ve been stripped, to make space for packing supplies, piles for pickup, bags for local delivery, books sticky-noted with questions for tomorrow’s shift. Our own form of triage. As I move through the partially-lit store, looking for a book someone has ordered online, I imagine this must be something like how it feels to work in one of those big warehouse stores. Take the order form, locate the product, label the product for customer retrieval, repeat. Is this still bookselling?

This is week eight of crisis operations, and it’s mind-boggling to think back on how things have changed, again and again, during that time. My last “regular” shift was Saturday, March 14. This was soon after all of the state universities announced an immediate move to online instruction, and it was clear that things were changing quickly. The next day, the bookstore closed its doors to the public, for the foreseeable future. Like many of you, I read Joanna’s message that Sunday and sobbed. I knew it was the right thing to do, but it felt so wrong to close a place that has been a home, a sanctuary to so many. 

That next week was a scramble. We were one of only a few businesses locally that voluntarily closed down, and people still wanted – needed – books. With the library closed and kids home from school, the bookstore suddenly felt like a truly essential business. We fielded an influx of online and phone orders with gratitude and as much organization as we could muster. This meant an immediate, radical shift in operations. In the “before times,” we might get 10 or 12 online orders in a week. Since March 15, we’ve processed almost 3500. 

Then, on March 23, the Governor issued a state-wide stay-at-home directive. This meant an end to curbside pickup and another (immediate, radical) shift in operations. Shipping everything – even local orders – meant investing in packing supplies, apologizing to customers who had expected to pick up their books, and developing an intimate relationship with the USPS tracking system. As we have come to see in recent weeks, the (essential, underfunded) USPS has been overwhelmed by the bulk of shipments, nationwide, and delivery times climbed from a week to a month or more, with nothing we at the bookstore could do to help.

April 6 was my last day in the store before returning last week. That was the day a local public safety officer informed the bookstore that we were an “unessential business” and could not continue even the minimal operations we were then conducting. Our already skeletal team was stripped further, and only owners and managers could be onsite. This time the immediate, radical shift meant finding ways to work remotely – continuing to ship books to readers without ever being able to touch those books ourselves. We learned that other independent bookstores were having success shipping directly from their warehouses, which made many orders more efficient, for us and for customers.

And now we’re back – well, “back” – in the store, still on a very limited, socially-distant basis. Most days we have one bookseller working to receive incoming orders from FedEx and scanning them into the system, and another person organizing items for curbside pickup or shipment. Other team members are still working remotely to process online orders, respond to emails, and curate personalized book recommendations or gift baskets. Oh, and there’s the amazing work happening to prepare large orders for organizations that are getting books to children, not to mention the ongoing work of updating our website with new products and events to help keep community members engaged with their favorite bookstore, even while apart. 

It’s a lot, and I’m grateful for the part I get to play in it, even through the frequent changes, the (inevitable, inescapable) strangeness. This is still “bookselling,” I think. We’re helping people get great books – and puzzles, socks, games, gifts – even if the experience is different for the shopper and seller alike. As someone who takes real joy in helping a reader find the perfect book, it’s heartbreaking not to be able to be with people, sharing space and ideas. It’s heartbreaking to feel like we’ve let people down, because of a botched order or a missing delivery. It’s heartbreaking to know that we are far from alone in our struggle, and that there are many people facing much worse.

Through everything, the bookstore adapts. Like everyone – parents, teachers, medical professionals, restaurant workers, farmers, small businesses of all kinds – we adapt because we have to. And we’ll keep adapting for as long as we have to. Until it is safe and responsible to reopen our doors, to attempt a return to some kind of normal. We’ll be here, selling books.