Love Your Indie

According to Joe Hill, March is Love Your Independent Bookstore Month (no idea if this is a pre-existing event or something of his own creation), and he’s cooked up a contest to celebrate it. You can read all about it at his site, but the gist is this: buy a book at an independent bookstore, send him a photograph of the receipt, maybe win a book from him, Subterranean Press, or PS Publishing.

I’ve worked in several independent bookstores over the years. Some, like San Francisco’s Books Inc., were great. Employees were valued, and the discovery and promotion of new books was encouraged. Plus, they had that difficult-to-describe comfort that is so important in a bookstore. Do you know what I mean? How there are some shops that you can lose yourself in, where you feel free to linger, explore, and let time pass? That’s important for the customers who like to spend an hour or two browsing, but it’s exponentially more so for the bookseller who’s stuck there for eight-plus hours.

My experiences with other stores that I will not link were less positive. I worked at shops that were little more than vanity projects for their owners, where the sellers were expected to be happy to work for scraps because independent bookstores are, by cultural expectation, special,and we were privileged to be part of them. You know how your local bookstore–hell, how even Barnes & Noble–has a “Staff Picks” table or shelf? I once worked at a bookstore where books that the staff chose to recommend were placed on a table labeled “[Owner's Name]‘s Picks,” because she was just that much of a narcissist. There’s a rumor about a Bay Area bookstore where I never worked that the owners, citing competition with Amazon, asked the entire staff to take pay cuts in order to keep the store in business. The staff agreed. Shortly thereafter, the owners opened up a branch on the other side of the bay.

Having worked in the biz means that I am decidedly less sentimental about independent bookstores than some people. Independence ranks low on my list of deciding factors when it comes to picking a place to shop. If your store has a crummy selection, if the space is uninviting, if you’re snobby about genre books, or if I know enough bad things about the people who run it, I’m just as likely buy my books online as I am to come inside. A shitty independent bookstore is still a shitty bookstore.

That said, an independent bookstore is about a million times more likely to get things right. There are some stores in the Bay Area that are truly special places, and not one of them is a Borders.  Green Apple is somehow simultaneously cozy and spacious. It’s amazingly well-stocked. The staff is excited about books, and their excitement is infectious. Black Oak Books is another great one. I sorely miss my childhood bookstore, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Books in Larkspur. It’s the first place where I remember being aware of how many stories surrounded me, how long it would take me to read them all, and how exciting a prospect that was.

For my Love Your Indie entry, I opted to do my shopping at Dark Carnival in Berkeley. I’ve mentioned it on this blog before, and now I’m mentioning it again. It’s a cramped, chaotic space that has twice as many books as it does shelf space. Bottom shelves are hidden behind books piled on the floor. Sections snake into each other. Weird toys dangle off of just about everything. You don’t shop there so much as you delve. The place activates the imagination. Tons of fun.

Here I am on my way in:

Here’s what I bought:

Y’all should enter too. It’s fun. If none of the prizes appeal to you, enter anyway. I’ll gladly take your winnings off your hands.

(Tangentially, if you’re at all interested in bookstores, I cannot recommend this book enough.)