Nourishment is a two way street

Good morning,

The article pasted below comes from an industry email; called "Shelf Awareness" and it hits upon some themes I have been writing about of late. Please note that Ms Ripley was a legendary leader of our industry. I believe and I hope you do as well, that there is something inherently valuable about the existence of Phoenix Books. We offer a sense of community to our customers that doesn't exist on the internet. There is nothing anonymous about sitting across from your friend over a cappuchino and catching up on life. There is nothing overwhelming or depersonalized about chatting with our booksellers about new books, old books or hard to find books. Nor do I feel like a salmon swimming upstream or a futile gesture because I believe that there are enough thoughtful and mindful folks in our community who will come and sustain Phoenix Books in return for nourishing your appetite for literature and coffee:) Read on and feel free to comment!

* * *Sad Ending for Second StorySecond Story Bookshop, Chappaqua, N.Y., is closing, according to the New York Times.
Owner Joan Ripley, who founded the store 37 years ago, told the paper, "Our customer count is so far down, and I attribute that mostly to Amazon, and then you have the double whammy of the economy. . . . Especially for younger people, it's like a game now: You look on the Internet and find where you get something for $10.29 here instead of $10.39 there. We can't compete with that, but there are things you lose in ways that are not numerically measurable when a place like this closes."
The store had come close to shutting its doors in the past, but Ripley, who is 75 and a former ABA president, managed to keep going. She had been helped in part by former President Bill Clinton, a book-buying resident of the town since 2000 who regularly has sung Second Story's praises.
The Times allowed as how indies that are doing well share two attributes:
"Many of the most successful independents, like Bookends in Ridgewood, N.J., or R. J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Conn., are increasingly in the business of book events and real-world social networking as much as walk-in sales. Despite the aura of predigital charm, they're like any other business: Change and adapt, or die.
"And most of them, whether explicitly or implicitly, have managed to get across the message that we need you, but you need us: A community that wants a vibrant downtown with a local bookstore that's about books, and about something more as well, needs to support it. So, in New Canaan, Conn., for example, Elm Street Books exists because seven local residents put up the money to keep it going, more as a civic gesture than an entrepreneurial one."

borders and noble and amazonian thoughts!

Buy Local folks! That is not a slogan it is a necessity. Buy from Amazon and steal sales tax revenues from the state of Vermont. That is not a real savings since you are in effect stealing from yourself. Until the politicos realize that sales tax ought to be collected on all transactions and that the Internet simply does not deserve "special tax treatment" to "protect it" then we can go ahead and continue to weaken our local communities and infrastructures by blindly believing we are "getting a deal". Think about that the next time you hit a pot hole!

Then recently our wonderful friends at Barnes&Noble got caught with some 50 illegal immigrants working in one of their distribution centers, which, since they use them, allows them to get a book for 5% less than Phoenix. Gee, you don't' suppose there is a relationship between low wages and artificially low prices do you?

And just today the wobbly folks at Borders announced layoffs of 250 employees. That must be on top of the 136 HQ layoffs in February and...the 742 layoffs announced on March 5th.Another blow for customer service at this fiscally troubled chain!

Hey, if you were worried about Gift Certificate redemption before, I'd hurry on down to Borders and cash mine in LOL

And yet, Phoenix Books has not let any one go, nor have we cut any hours and our customers have responded by keeping our sales at or above last years figures for January and February. Hooray!

Michael DeSanto