Store Thoughts

Why Independent Bookstores?

As we celebrate Independent Bookstore Day this weekend – on Saturday, April 24 – we decided to take a moment to reflect on some of the things that make independent bookstores such special places. What makes independent bookstores, and in particular the little corner of the world we call home at Bookbug & this is a bookstore, such comfortable places to shop, empowering places to work, and integral parts of a community? Here are a few of our favorite things.

Our shelves are filled by people with brains and hearts, not by computer algorithms.

At big chain bookstores – so we’ve heard – purchasing decisions come from way up high. Someone in an office looks at projections of what will sell and orders huge quantities of books by authors with famous names. At an indie bookstore, every book you see on our shelves and tables was chosen by one of our team members. We get to think not only about what the publishers believe will be popular, but also what we each, individually, feel excited about and want to hand-sell. We get to decide what to curate, carry, and uplift. We get to create displays that feature voices and stories that might otherwise go unheard or unseen. This makes for a more interesting, diverse collection, and also booksellers who feel empowered to put our hearts onto the shelves and into your hands.

“Why do I love working here? I’m surrounded by books!”

— Steph

It’s good to be where everyone knows your name.

Because of our Gratitude Rewards Program, we start each transaction by asking for shoppers’ names. After not too long, many booksellers start to remember regulars’ names and automatically pull up their accounts right away without asking. The same goes for frequent patrons of the Cafe. We love being able to greet someone with “Welcome back! Can I get your regular started for you?” It feels good to be known, and it feels good to give the gift of being known.

Sometimes customers are surprised, and they’re often quite tickled, to be known by their local bookstore. As we like to say, there are probably worse places to be a “regular”!

Book people are special people.

People shop at independent bookstores because they care about books, because they want to raise kids and grandkids who care about books, because they want to be part of a wold where books and ideas matter. Indie bookstore shoppers know that books might cost more here than at those online giants, and they’re willing to make that investment not only in the pages they take home, but in the store itself, and its people. Book people are excited about new releases and equally thrilled to discover an old favorite among the stacks. Book people are our people, forever.

“I love people, I love kids, I love books, I love community. To work at the intersection of things I love is a true joy.

— Shirley

We’re part of the community. We are community.

Being an independent bookstore means that we are part of this place, and no other. It means that we celebrate authors and unique products that are specifically from HERE. It means that we get to count our neighbors, our dentists, our kids’ teachers, and our friends among our shoppers. It means that we understand, in a way that a larger entities cannot, the unique gifts and challenges of our city. When Kalamazoo celebrates, we celebrate. When Kalamazoo mourns, we mourn. When Kalamazoo strives for a vision, a promise of a better future, we add our voice to the striving.

“The sense of ownership in the community. Comfort, feelings of home, curated inventory, personal connection in all aspects of the job… Lovely piles of books…”

— Cheryl

We get to bring our wholes selves to work, every day.

Bookstore employees are weird and wonderful people. Among our team of booksellers and baristas, you’ll find grandparents and recent college grads, a mural artist and a published children’s book illustrator, full-time teachers and three people with PhDs, popular local musicians, and an immensely broad wealth of knowledge and unique expertise. Not only does this diversity mean that we are better able, as a team, to help shoppers find their new favorite book or the perfect coffee, but it also makes this a pretty rad place to work.

Knowing that your coworker may not share your same specific nerdiness, but they definitely have their own — that’s pretty great.

Knowing that your manager, Kim or Kasey, is going to get to know the specific parts of your job that bring you the most joy and make sure you get to do those things as much as possible — that’s pretty great.

Knowing that your experiences, your boundaries, your pronouns, and your whole self will not only be accepted but whole-heartedly embraced — that’s really great.

Indie Bookstores – Now and Always

The last year has been hard for everyone, and small local businesses like bookstores have certainly seen our share of challenges. We have also been overwhelmed by the generosity, care, patience, enthusiasm, and genuine support of our community. We are here because you are here. And on Independent Bookstore Day, as on all days, we are grateful.

National Poetry Month

by Bookseller Sally, a non-poetry person

I have a confession to make — I often feel like I’m not very good at reading poetry.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy reading poetry from time to time, and I even took a class or two back in undergrad (with local legend Diane Seuss, no less!) But somehow I think I internalized the idea, a long, long time ago, that there are “poetry people” and “non-poetry people,” and I guess I’m just the latter.

Of course this is ridiculous, and the longer I work in a bookstore, the more opportunities I have to explore the beautiful variety of poetry that is available for readers young and old. Poetry takes so many forms – long or short, wide or narrow, rhyming or free-verse, silly or melancholy, concrete or etherial – and different readers will connect with different things.

So, just in case you think you are also a non-poetry person, here are some things I’ve discovered that have helped me realize that maybe – just maybe – I could be a poetry person too.

1. I love kids’ books that rhyme

Kids love rhymes and rhythm, and with good reason! Rhyming is fun! It’s silly! It makes language playful, creative, and engaging. Whether it’s one of Sandra Boynton‘s extensive selection of board books, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Josh Funk’s Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast, or so many more, I find that rhyming books are some of my favorites among our collection in Bookbug.

2. I love structured poems

I don’t even care what the structure is, necessarily. Take, for example, Nikki Grimes’ “golden shovel” poems (like this one, above, in One Last Word). Grimes chooses a source poem, highlights a line, and then builds her own poems with that source line cascading down the right side of the page.

The Lost Spells (below) is another beautiful example of structured poetry, inspired by words from the natural world.

Whatever the structure, I love imagining this little window into the poet’s process – how she chooses a form and finds new freedom within constraint.

3. I love novels in verse

This is an especially popular genre among middle grades and young adult books, in which whole novels are written as free-verse poems, with line breaks and stanzas, making the text lyrical and inviting.

Authors such as Elizabeth Acevedo (Clap When You Land, above; The Poet X), Kwame Alexander (e.g., Solo, Swing, The Crossover series), Jason Reynolds (Long Way Down), Sharon Creech (Love that Dog), Jacqueline Woodson (Brown Girl Dreaming, Before the Ever After), and Jasmine Warga (Other Words for Home) (and many more) have used this form with great success.

4. I love poems that play with shape

Poetry is such a versatile medium that invites creativity both in word choice and in the physical presentation on the page. Take, for example, these two poems (above) from How to Love the World, or the two below from Shelter in Place: Stories and Words from the Socially Distant Front Lines of HOME by the youth of Read and Write Kalamazoo.

I love how the shape of a poem affects how I read it – slowly or quickly, smoothly or sharply – and how I get to feel, again, that connection to the poet as craftsperson, guiding me to their truth.

5. I love when poetry makes me pause

Above: “Brand New Clothes” by Langston Hughes (in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes) and “The Tradition” by Jericho Brown (in The Tradition)

“Exile of Memory” by Joy Harjo (in An American Sunrise)

“Some Questions You Might Ask” by Mary Oliver (in New and Selected Poems, Volume One)

I love the power of poetry to bring life to a stop, even just for a moment.
Sometimes it’s a breathless pause, sometimes contented.
A pause of recognition, of resonance.
A pause of wonder or grief.
A moment with myself and another soul, somewhere in time.

Whether you consider yourself a “poetry person” or still feel like a novice, you can browse our featured National Poetry Month selections here: https://www.bookbugkalamazoo.com/national-poetry-month-2021

A New Look for Picture Books

It started with a question… How can we make it easier for shoppers to find the perfect picture book?

Our beloved picture book section is home to over 1000 books. There are generations-old favorites like The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Story of Ferdinand, and brand-new classics like I am Every Good Thing and Outside, Inside. With so many possibilities to choose from, browsing this wall can feel at once enticing and intimidating.

This question prompted a conversation… How can we help empower shoppers by organizining this large section into more approchable themes? What kinds of themes or topics are most desired? How can we showcase smaller publishers and newer authors?

As we pondered these questions, we thought about the excited grandparent searching for the perfect gift for a new arrival. We thought about the teacher looking to diversify their classroom library. We thought about the parent whose child has just developed a new obsession.

And so, with a little bit of muscle, quite a bit of organization, and even more love, we settled on a dozen new themes within our picture book inventory. Visitors to this section will now find specific selections of books for ABCs, counting, and making art; books about going to school and books about going to bed; books that are quietly beautiful and books that are super silly; books that celebrate important people in our lives (like grandparents) and books that celebrate cultural traditions; books featuring rhyming; and, of course, books about vehicles, dinosaurs, and fantasy (like unicorns and pirates).

There are still plenty of books that didn’t fit into one of these categories, and certainly many more themes we could have chosen. But we like to think of these new thematic sections as little highlights… small gifts to the thoughtful, busy shopper… consistent reminders of our core values: Kindness, Joy, Knowledge, and Growth.

On Books and Being. An Independent Bookstore.

There is a great photo of Ann Patchett perched on a front table in her luminous independent bookstore, Parnassus, taken last year. You may have seen it. It was in a small national newspaper and then perhaps, on every booklover’s social media feed for days. I still see it occasionally on mine. I quietly bow to Ann each time.

I then (sometimes) look lovingly into Bookbug’s own (less luminous, more harried, equally earnest) space and my own (less luminous, more harried, equally earnest) eyes, and smile at something bigger–and more luminous–than either of these pictures, or places, or people.

I smile at the fact that the independent bookstore is safe.

That the “brutal beatings” we weathered (so termed by business reporters and real-life exhausted operators) were not actually “brutal.” They were inconvenient (perceived conveniences to some): the rise of the Big Box, the growth of online shopping, the steady intrigue of digital intake. All of it interesting, some of it troublesome and none of it touching the actual value in the business of tending books, or knowledge or art. None of it poking through the soul of any true endeavor to do these things, and therefore none of it actually “brutal” at all.

Even the comeback story of the independent bookstore may have been embellished. I enjoyed it (and perhaps our store benefited from it) as much as anyone.  It was rumbling in the belly of the industry even before Patchett and her seemingly brilliant workhorse of a partner, Karen Hayes, opened their store in Nashville in 2011. But those among us who had laid bookish wood floors, painted exposed ceilings, group- epiphanized chalkboard section signs, and survived the lowest-functioning retail economy in decades knew darn well we had something stronger than comeback energy or foolish hope to bank on.

We had our human Selves.

We had the imagination and gall to want to work in a place, with an offering, and toward a goal we care deeply and passionately about, to allow customers and colleagues to support a creative and welcoming home of spirited alertness. We didn’t know if these were the characteristics of the leaders and consumers of a profitable company, but we did know that they were the characteristics of a shared good life. We were selfish in our desire for one.

As years in business and life go on, we are also keenly aware of life breaking, that life is, by definition, broken.

In preparing for a recent staff meeting, I thought about the irreparable loss our store had suffered in the weeks prior: a family of passionate readers whose teenage son died unexpectedly; a father to three vibrant, hilarious kids taken by a car accident; a partner, writer and friend gone on one unjust winter’s night; a bitter, angry,  confused and increasingly belligerent country.

These were stories that broke us. As a bookstore we were (and are) not here to alter or fix them. I took (and take) incredible comfort though in the fact that we are here to be alive and alert to them, to be present in the very same way any worthwhile book, story, or work of human art is: as a physical, intellectual, and emotional recognition of the fact that life is hard and also astoundingly beautiful , that soulful sanctuary is needed and that thought and art and love may be all that any of us should ever dream to have.

A beautiful bookstore is a place to find it.

This is exactly why I bow to Ann Patchett every time I see her in her photo or and hear her cheering on indies, even if we are not really the underdogs. It’s why I agreed to take my own picture.

And so here we are, Ann, in our pictures, holding our dogs, holding our cause, holding our customers in a promise to be present for them, and in the hope (nay certainty) that they will choose to be present back.

Here’s to crowds of them wanting to do so on Saturday, April 29th when you and I and hundreds of earnest bookstore owners have a party in support of our loves.

#independentbookstoreday2017