Grateful online shoppers are helping bookstores stay afloat right now. Will it last?
Many fans of Powell’s, in particular, seemed to be shocked that such an iconic business would take so drastic a step. But the economics of bookselling have always been a challenge. “You’re dealing with a fixed-price product,” said Pamela French, executive director of the, which offers financial assistance for bookstore employees in need. The price of the goods they sell is printed right on the covers. And their other costs—rent, electricity, internet, payroll—are more or less fixed, too.
For some stores, laying off hourly workers may be a way to ensure they could get unemployment benefits. That’s the call that Philbrick made, furloughing 32 employees at her two stores so that they could collect unemployment insurance and other financial assistance while the shops were closed. “It was awful,” she said. But she ran the math and decided they would be better off getting those benefits than on her payroll with their hours cut.
The coronavirus shutdown is like no other she’s faced, even the one in 2012, when her Mystic store flooded during Hurricane Sandy. But with that, “The tide came in and the tide went out,” she said. “I saw an end to that.” She knew roughly about how long it would take to move all the books out, rip out the floors and repaint the walls, and reopen her doors. But now, “The future is so uncertain, we don’t know how long this is going to go on,” she said. “The tide hasn’t gone out yet.
in Brooklyn, New York. “Almost like we had to switch the kind of business we are in 24 hours.” After the store closed to browsing on March 16, the staff turned it “upside down,” creating stacks of books to be able to access them as quickly as possible to fulfill online orders. The four days before we spoke, business had been even higher than normal. “My fingers hurt from tapping in manually … all the credit card stuff,” he said.
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