Independent Bookstores and a People-Powered Future

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First Place in the Bookstore category: Boswell Book Company

In 2009 Milwaukee’s Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops closed after 82 years in business. At that moment the U.S. economy had fallen into the Great Recession, techno-nerds were all atwitter over Kindle and the rising tide of the internet was already threatening to sweep away anything made of brick and mortar. Defying the futurists and scarcely missing a day of business, longtime Schwartz book buyer and manager Daniel Goldin opened Boswell Book Company (2559 N. Downer Ave.) in Harry W. Schwartz’s East Side venue. Despite changes in society and technology, printed books endure. Goldin spoke to Off the Cuff about the challenges and rewards of bookselling.

It seems as if there was only a short gap between the closing of Schwartz and the opening of Boswell. What was your plan at the time? Did people think you were crazy for opening a bookstore in the 21st century?

Whereas now we are seeing new bookstores opening every week around the country, the mood was more somber in the late aughts. Pundits were saying we would stop seeing printed books by 2013. As is the case with all punditry, nobody ever did a “Why-were-you-so-off?” news story.  

Regarding the short time between the Schwartz closing and our opening—less than a week—the [Schwartz] family worked with both us and Next Chapter in Mequon so there would be as little gap as possible after we did our asset purchase. We worked out a timetable to close our store before the final markdowns at the other locations. Eventually [Schwartz’s] Shorewood and Brookfield became bookstores—Open Book and a branch of Half Price—but those opened later.

I’m the kind of person who can’t handle going out of business sales for stores that I love. I was happy that Schwartz didn’t immediately start discounting after their announcement, giving their loyal customers time to say goodbye where they could see the store as it was. If the store transfers to a liquidator, you might get a deal, but the experience isn’t going to be pleasant. I just got to say goodbye to The Soup House, which I’d been regularly visiting for 21 years—an average of one visit a week—and I got to have my favorite soup, chicken tikka masala, one last time, plus I bought another quart for my freezer. Remember when between Downtown, the Third Ward and Walker’s Point, there were something like five soup places? 

At a time when most anything can be purchased on Amazon, what purposes do brick and mortar bookshops serve? What is the value to readers for buying from a shop rather than online?

I have bookseller colleagues who actively fight the good fight. Danny Caine at The Raven in Lawrence, Kansas put together a zine that was then turned into a book called How to Resist Amazon and Why: The Fight for Local Economics, Data Privacy, Fair Labor, Independent Bookstores, and a People-Powered Future! and it’s a hit! It’s selling well at Boswell and I’ve noticed it’s out of stock at several of the wholesaler warehouses we shop. He’s really got all the arguments lined up. I’m a little more soft sell—I’m just not a podium kind of person. I like to say “We’ll be there as long as you want us,” and at least until now, folks have responded to that. There’s a sense of pride in a lot of our customers about the store, and you can see that in the way that so many of them bring friends and relatives from out of town to visit.  

I don’t think people respond well to shaming, and I also am well aware of my and the store’s own faults and shortcomings. The book business is not set up with enough margin to pay people what they deserve unless you cut out the service and selection, and free shipping make it even more difficult for us. That said, there is a trend with plenty of shoppers that they buy a lot of other things on Amazon, but then shop at an independent bookstore for books. I wish we could transfer some of that mindset to other kinds of retail. If I could ask you as customers to do a couple of things, it would be to think about what you say to front line retailers, bookstore or otherwise. When you say, “I’ll just buy it at Amazon” or “I love looking at books here but I only read on a Kindle” or “Amazon’s cheaper—will you match the price,” it’s like punching that front liner in the face. I’m not talking about me here, but that person at the front register. Please try to think about what you say. I’ve actually tried to take that lesson with me when I’m a consumer.  

Over the years, we’ve also worked to diversify our author program, our displays, our selection. Representation really should be everywhere. Fortunately, we’ve been lucky to work with a lot of partner organizations so that we could bring BIPOC authors to the community. We’ve also tried to work with nonprofits to help get books in the hands of folks who might not be able to get them on their own. Could we do better? Of course we could. I also know that everyone is chasing after the same programming and the hot authors—so my game plan is to discover great authors of color that are a bit under the radar. What I’m saying is that if you haven’t read Everywhere You Don’t Belong by Gabriel Bump, Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford, Lakewood by Megan Giddings or my new favorite, The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade, you should. Oh, and Punch Me Up to the Gods, by Brian Broome. That’s an amazing memoir.  

I understand that there was a resurgence of independently owned bookshops across the U.S. in the last years before the pandemic. How has COVID impacted booksellers nationwide? Has there been a significant number of closures?

There have been some closures and plenty more sales. But even that’s good news. Ten-15 years ago, it seemed like it was much harder to sell a bookstore…

We wound up opening for limited browsing last September. Some of my friends at other bookstores are just opening now. Sidewalk pickup, putting all kinds of items on our website that we formerly didn’t, pivoting to virtual events and book clubs, it was crazy. For the six months we were closed to browsing, we learned what it was like to be an inefficient warehouse. By summer, many of us were longing for browsing just so we could interact with people in a positive way.  

Describe the average Boswell customer—or is there no such thing?

I don’t think there’s a typical customer, though we can definitely sell some books better than others. If someone lives five blocks away, the odds are that we’re going to see them more often than someone 20 miles away. One thing that was interesting about COVID was there were pockets of customers that we didn’t expect—I particularly noticed this when I was doing deliveries in spring and summer. I’d like to give a shout out to a few concentrations that were a bit unexpected—thank you East Tosa, Tippecanoe (especially right around the library), and the small but loyal gang in Germantown. While some of these places did not make logical sense for me to deliver, every so often I’d make a run when I saw a good amount of geographically adjacent packages, just to surprise people. Plus, it was nice to get out in the world, which was hard to do. At one point, I was carrying my essential worker note from the Milwaukee Health Department, just in case a police officer flagged me down.   

Tell me about the various steps you took to keep Boswell alive during COVID, including curbside sales and the shift from live author events to Zoom presentations.

Regarding the sidewalk pickup, all the bookstores we know pivoted at once, and the difference was how much we were actually allowed [by state restrictions] to do—less on the coasts, more inland. We moved to a touchless system with a cart after trying a few options, and that’s pretty much still in place. When we opened for browsing, we started with a 10-person limit, then 15, and we’re hoping when the staff has their second shots that we’ll raise it again. It’s actually draining for staff to be continually counting. 

Event pivot took a little longer—really it was about five weeks before we had our first virtual event and it wasn’t really until June that we stopped cancelling events and started pivoting. In retrospect, I wish I’d done that earlier, but I didn’t know what I was doing. The biggest problem we had were our ticketed events. Only three of our 10 or so ticketed events from spring were refunded by Brown Paper Tickets. There is now a court order for them to refund the tickets, but they have seven months to do so, so we expect that some of our customers will be waiting for a while. We spent a lot of time figuring out what we should do about this, especially after Brown Paper Tickets cut off our communication with our customers. We had downloaded the contact addresses, but I can’t do a bulk mailing and it’s more complicated than you’d think to send 300+ emails to give folks an event update.  

I have customers who love virtual events and other who hate them. I love that we can host authors who’d normally never come to us—Kazuo Ishiguro! Obscure authors who live abroad!—and I love how intimate the events are. The authors are generally home, and they are so relaxed! That said, there are certain things that don’t work as well, like the larger ticketed events. I find that we’ve pivoted more to chasing events for books we love, which is something that’s much harder to do when you have to get that author to Milwaukee. But even more than that, if it’s some obscure fiction book we’re excited about (like most recently Leonard and Hungry Paul, what a phenomenon for us!), we can often get folks to buy the book but it’s harder to get them to come out for someone they don’t know, particularly for fiction. But it’s easier to get them to turn on their laptop or phone to watch.

I also love that most of our events are now archived online. We’re still trying to figure out how to do this when we go back to in-person programming.   

When do you anticipate returning to business as normal?

I take each day as it comes… And with a lot of Americans not wanting vaccination and a lot of countries not able to vaccinate, that means the variants are going to have a lot of opportunities to be fruitful and multiply, so to speak. But it seems like scientists still don’t really have a handle on herd immunity either. So it seems I don’t have an answer.  

We really don’t know what will happen with touring either. I’m sure a lot of publishers are thinking, “Why bother?” They had been cutting out funds for author travel anyway. But lots of authors are itching to get out on their own, and certain kinds of authors who generally broke out through touring (mystery and thriller series notably) don’t seem to be breaking out in the same way.  

And of course, we have several new bookstores opening in Milwaukee, from Niche Book Bar to Lion’s Tooth to La Revo Books (I don’t know if they have a plan for a physical space). We looked regional trade association list and saw a Milwaukee Bookstore and Bar and we’ve still not been able to figure out what or where it is. One thing that’s been nice is that with virtual events, we’ve been able to work with other bookstores. We have a monthly program with Books & Company and a more-or-less quarterly one with InkLink in East Troy. We’ve also been able to host events with Outwords and some of the new stores.  

So normal? What is normal anyway? Is normal even a good thing? What I can be sure of is that there is no constant except change.