This year marks ABA’s 125th year of helping indie bookstores thrive. As part of our 125th anniversary celebration, we’ll be sharing interviews with key figures in the industry and exploring how the organization has changed since its inception in 1900.
So just by dint of endurance, I’ve seen a lot.
BTW: You were at ABA for more than thirty years, and witnessed a lot of big changes both at ABA and in the industry. When you think back on your time here, what are some of the things that stand out the most to you?
DC: I would think of IndieBound and its precursor, Book Sense. I would think of IndieCommerce. I would think of the long and ultimately successful sales tax fairness fight. And I would think of Winter Institute and Children’s Institute.
Book Sense and IndieBound had similar goals. Book Sense didn't really achieve the consumer goals that it wanted, but it did achieve something very important. It branded, within publishing, one of the real fundamentally powerful capacities indie bookselling has: the power of handselling. The power of many diverse and insightful minds selecting titles that they believe more people ought to be reading.
Often, those selections, do coalesce around one or two particular titles within a given time frame. That was always one of the things that we tried to say to publishers. But Book Sense (and then IndieBound, the Indie Next List, and Indie Bestsellers lists) began not only to provide hard data, but it began to give publishers a way to communicate, in an understandable and persuasive way, the power of a healthy, diverse, robust, national, independent bookselling network.
Until IndieBound we mostly had anecdotal stories for publishers, then suddenly they could see when 25% to 35% of the initial sales for a new title were in the indie channel. And everybody else noticed that — the publishers, the wholesalers, the chains. But without that initial indie booster rocket, a lot of titles would never have reached, if you will, orbital velocity.
IndieCommerce meant that independent booksellers didn't have to say no to a sale.
It wasn’t uncommon for a good customer to come in and confess, “I read this review. It was really late at night. I wanted to get the book. I went someplace else. I'm really, really sorry.”
With IndieCommerce, if a customer wanted to buy a book at three in the morning in their pajamas, they could. It was a convenience issue. Independent bookstore customers recognized that they're not going to buy all their titles online. They value the time they spend with other books lovers, with booksellers, and in the store.
Consumers aren't stupid. They don't pay more for something they can find for less somewhere else unless they feel they're getting value. They think of the value as their lifetime transactions with the store. Sometimes it's a sales transaction, but sometimes it's just a social transaction. They think, “I like that store in town. I want them to stay.”
Then, very much connected with online commerce, was sales tax fairness.
For way too many years, online retailers benefited because they willfully misread the law and failed to collect sales tax that was due to the states. They claimed that they weren't based in those states, that they didn't have any nexus in those states, when, in fact, they were selling to citizens in every state.
It was a tough fight. And David Grogan was unbelievable. I saw David become the go-to guy for sales tax knowledge, advice, and strategy.
David and I would go to see state legislators, and we could barely get the time of day.
It took a few years just to break that down, and credit to David for making sure, at every step along the way, that there was an opportunity for this to be a bipartisan issue.
It was a long fight and it was ultimately successful, but it showed me that in this kind of situation, you're often outgunned when you're alone. You need allies.
ABA took a leadership role in educating, mobilizing, encouraging, and offering assistance where we could to a lot of other indies in other industries.
We also learned that booksellers often had no understanding of how respected they were in their communities. We always tried to have a bookseller constituent come to these meetings with us, and in almost every case, the staff or the legislator or the staff were so glad to meet them. It certainly helped with the fight.
But that advocacy, those lessons, can be taken to other fights. As the people in this administration and the state legislatures literally try to take people's personhood away, those guidelines are important to keep in mind. Find allies, ground your story in human experiences, have pertinent facts on hand, and don’t give up.
There was a really nice guy who teaches at Harvard Business School, Ryan Raffaelli, who took a number of years to study the independent bookstore channel. One of his ultimate insights was the ability of independent stores to recognize that they were in fact competitors, but their success was enhanced if there was a larger, vibrant, and healthy community.
One of the remarkable things ABA was able to do was to create those opportunities in an organized and effective way, collecting the practical knowledge and insights of independent stores and sharing them. Witness the Winter Institute.
It was a way to build on that foundation of collegiality, and it was fueled by the knowledge, passion, and hard work of booksellers — of both the people leading the panel and the people learning.
That, too, became kind of a virtuous circle with ABA listening to what people felt they needed to learn about.
BTW: What is something ABA did or offered to booksellers that you feel was especially helpful or meaningful?
DC: Technology. That's been a constant.
You're going to think that I'm 110, but one of the first articles I had a hand in editing when I came to ABA was about why bookstores should be computerized.
The Borders brothers’ competitive advantage was the size of the stores and the number of titles in those stores, and the only reason they could do that was because one of the brothers knew computer programming.
They had this proprietary computer inventory system. Not to get too into the weeds, but if you don't have any idea of the value of the books on your shelves at any one time, then getting above a certain number of titles is just too dangerous.
So I used to talk about affordable computing power, and how that was like introducing elevators into urban architecture — suddenly, the buildings could be taller than five stories.
ABA has helped people adopt technology again and again — computer inventory systems, IndieCommerce, social media, etc.
I think the next thing is business education.
When I began, there were an amazing number of smart book people in the independent bookselling ranks. There were not a lot of smart business people — people who could really read profit and loss in a balance sheet, or people who understood how to maximize cash in hard times.
Through education and through ABACUS, ABA has given booksellers the tools to go deep enough to greatly augment their chances of success. (And with ABACUS, they can go as deep as they want. They can really roll their sleeves up and get into the numbers.)
And since the beginning of my tenure, but increasingly with each decade, ABA has been helping booksellers understand the power of community connection.
BTW: We’re celebrating 125 years of ABA, and by extension the strength and history of the larger bookselling community. But when you look forward, what are your hopes for the future?
DC: I'm not in a particularly happy place right now politically.
So to see what independent bookstores are doing — sometimes in the face of vile threats, the ugliest insinuations, smashed windows, graffiti, and in-store aggression — is beyond heartening. It's a commitment to the Constitution, to human rights, to the written word, and to language.
My hope is that booksellers will not just continue this fight politically, but do what they've always done, which is continually reinvent themselves. That's really one of the superpowers of bookselling.
If a chain wants to make a big change, it's got to start at the headquarters. It's got to go through a bunch of meetings. It's got to go into a budget and the budget's got to be approved. Then it's got to get rolled out.
In contrast to that, if an indie wants to expand the romance section, they could do it tomorrow. If it's only 10:00 am, they can do it today.
Booksellers not only have the smarts and the first-hand experience to reinvent themselves, they have the means to do it as well. I have no doubt that they'll continue to do that.
And now more than ever, can they just keep shining a light of diversity in their communities?
We're in dark times, and the light is shining out of the windows of bookstores, and that gives hope.