Bookstores

I slam my car door shut and and walk up the stained wooden staircase, opening the door to Merritt Bookstore and hearing the bell ring behind me. Colorful books line the shelves, each with their own author, title, and story. This small space is no bigger than two classrooms (including the loft, of course) but contains hundreds of millions of words and thousands of opportunities to experience the magic of a book, to hold a whole universe in your hands. I used to go there consistently as a little kid, but now with my Kindle, and more so my phone, the digitized world has kept me from returning. It’s easier to doomscroll than to buy, open, and read a book, and it’s easier still to click a button on a Kindle Paperwhite and have the very same book in whatever font and size you want on your screen. 

Every time I visit my grandparents’ house upstate, I go to Merritt Bookstore in the small town of Millbrook. This tradition laid the foundation for what has become a passion of mine—from The Strand to Oblong to Sweet Pickles to the Ripped Bodice, I’ve visited more small bookstores than I could count. Walking into a perfectly curated bookstore, carefully taking books off their shelves and meticulously putting them back, making small talk and exchanging book recommendations with the cashier, and physically holding the story in my hand is so profound that it is, to me, as much a part of a reading experience as the plot of a story itself. There’s an irreplaceable art to the feeling of scanning shelves instead of QR codes, tapping on covers instead of buttons, and exiting with the slam of a door instead of an X at the top right corner.

But technology has slowly stolen this art. Between 1995 and 2000, the number of independent bookstores dropped by 40 percent, due to the introduction of malls, the first models of “chain bookstores,” and, of course, Amazon. Since then, independent bookstores have slowly started making a comeback. Yet these levels are still nowhere near where they were when the only place to buy a book was the small bookstore on the corner. 

Furthermore, with the COVID-19 pandemic forcing most of our world to digitize, reliance on the internet for purchasing skyrocketed. The digital world has become the new normal; it’s hard to go back from everything delivered directly to you at a click of a button. A McKinsey and Co. study stated this perfectly: 70 percent of consumers treat convenience as the norm, not a luxury as it was before COVID. This hits indie bookstores especially hard, because they can’t compete with Amazon’s fast delivery time or the mere seconds it takes to download a book on the latest edition of a Kindle. 

There’s also the immense financial pressure giant chains put on small bookstores. They’re able to set prices that independent stores cannot compete with. Larger book sellers are able to buy books cheaper in bulk. An indie bookstore doesn’t need 10,000 copies of a latest release, but a chain like Barnes and Noble certainly does. With the introduction of “superstores,” retail space becomes cheaper per square foot, and Amazon doesn’t require any retail space at all. Therefore, Amazon completely eliminates any cost of rent and the things that come with renting a space completely. 

Outside of the bookstore industry, Amazon was reported to have replaced 1,753,634 retail jobs and 135,793 retail storefronts—hundreds of thousands of stores, run by small business owners with millions of stories to tell. At the end of the day, I won’t remember how I decorated my Kindle or what font and size I made the text. But I am absolutely certain that I’ll remember Merritt. I’ll remember how the shelves were organized, I’ll remember what their bookmarks look like, and I’ll remember my family’s favorite spot in the parking lot. I’ll remember the tangible.