Surrounded by books
Still, it all sucks.
Public holidays make a useful benchmark for how the store and the town are doing, year on year.
For example, our sales this past Thanksgiving and Christmas (Eve) were up significantly over last year, a reflection (I think) of the collective retreat into books and away from reality after the election but also (ho ho ho) a feeling that whatever terrible thing the new administration might do, at least we’d all have more money in our pockets.
Of course that was before the tariffs and America’s declaration of war on international visitors.
This past Memorial Day? Sales were down. Really down.
Like, 60% down, year on year.
Of course the weather can cause a dramatic change like that - we’ve seen big year on year differences when the weather rises over a hundred degrees. But last year, it was 97 degrees on Memorial Day, this year the high was 99.
A fluke, then? Maybe. I’m sure coverage of the recent terror attack caused a few folks to change their plans, and sometimes there’s just a weird confluence of events that causes a slow day in town.
But my gut tells me this isn’t a fluke. I’m feeling it every day in store - the mood of snowbirds from Canada who don’t feel welcome in America any more, the early cancellation of seasonal flights, nervousness about how tariffs and job cuts will crush household budgets. Everyone is on edge, even in a town where people come to escape. Perhaps particularly in a town like that.
I still think there’s a possibility of a COVID bump for the city. That is, the bump in visitors we saw post-pandemic when people didn’t feel safe traveling internationally. With border crossing now akin to the Hunger Games, I won’t be surprised if more folks decide to vacation domestically - perhaps in large enough numbers to offset the dramatic loss of international visitors. If the weather doesn’t get too hot this summer then we might do ok. Certainly the huge new Thompson Hotel must be banking own that, as must the new coffee shop and gelato place on our block (both opening to replace businesses that didn’t make it.)
Because I have no alternative, I’m choosing to see the summer uncertainty as an opportunity. An opportunity to spend more time in the store (to replace staffing hours I can’t afford if sales dry up, especially with our landlord hiking rates yet again and charging us thousands of dollars in additional maintenance and security fees we didn’t ask for), an opportunity to re-organize the shelves, to return slow-moving stock and replace it with titles and authors customers are asking for more of.
An opportunity to work on the stuff I actually get paid to do. The Confessions is publishing on July 22nd and my brilliant publicist at Atria has arranged for me to write all kinds of promotional essays and articles. I also have a looming deadline for the next book. So I’m planning to use my in-store down time to write all of those things.
I suppose if I were being utterly selfish I could take solace in the fact that The Confessions is suddenly an incredibly timely thriller, dealing as it does with the end of the world triggered by AI-obsessed tech weirdos and their military-industrial paymasters. If you haven’t already pre-ordered it, then I (and my mortgage company) would be very, very grateful if you did.
But still, it all sucks. It sucks that the city, the country, and the world are facing all of this uncertainty for absolutely no good reason. It sucks that we have to string banners from lampposts stating the obvious: That Canadians are our friends. It sucks that even the people who voted for this madness didn’t vote for this particular madness (even if the madness they did vote for was even less forgivable). It sucks that nowhere is safe from the chaos that our new political masters, and their new tech masters have wrought.
The good news - because I have to find some in all of this - is that we are still here. That physical bookstores are still a thing. I still get to meet so many avid readers every day, and talk about authors and stories that we mutually love, and lessons that books can teach us. That’s why my go-to response to customers asking “how are you?” is “I can’t complain. I’m surrounded by books.”
Even if you don’t have the budget to buy any books right now (I totally get it, and it’s exactly why we have libraries!) then I hope you’ll stop by the store and say hello this summer. Just as the world has been thrown into this mess by people who don’t read books and thus have no empathy, I truly believe that it will ultimately be saved by readers.