How can independent bookstores begin to pay their booksellers a fair and living wage?

From Literary Hub:

We love indie bookstores. Even people who don’t read books love them. Insofar as movies and TV are a technicolor mirror of public perception, indie bookstores are wonderful and pure, quaint and charming—no one who works at (or owns!) an indie bookstore could be anything but a selfless and thoughtful champion of truth and beauty (even if they’re mean and sarcastic on the outside they most definitely have a heart of gold on the inside).

The problem with this widespread and rose-tinted version of independent bookstores is that it makes it easy to forget that to be a bookseller is to work an often thankless retail job for barely living wages with little to no benefits except for free books and the occasional opportunity to introduce local teens to the stories of Breece D’J Pancake or the early work of Anne Carson.

So how do we make bookselling—which, if we understand books as central to the ongoing attempt to puzzle out humanity and its complexities, is a worthy job—a better, longer-term career option for those who are most passionate about books?

This is one of the central questions at the heart of an upcoming two-part event called “Reimagining Bookstores.” Don’t let the title alarm you, this is not an app-based attempt to “disrupt” bookselling—in fact, the open forum is being co-hosted by a who’s-who of some of this country’s best bookstores, including Avid Bookshop in Athens, GA, San Francisco’s Booksmith, Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, CA, Chicago’s Seminary Co-op Bookstore, and Seattle’s Third Place Books.

Link to the rest at Literary Hub

PG doesn’t usually include multiple excerpts from the same source on the same day, but he was surprised to see the OP’s topic.

The unfortunate reality is that almost all bookstores are marginal businesses.

PG doubts that anyone who thinks much about a career that will allow her/him to support a family in the absence of a wealthy spouse would seriously consider employment in a bookstore as any sort of long-term solution to anything. If PG’s unsystematic assessment of the few physical bookstores he has entered during the last year or two is correct, many people who work in bookstores would not be likely candidates for any sort of work that could support a middle-class lifestyle.

PG lives in an area that includes a couple of large universities and occasionally sees a college-student type in a bookstore. Still, primarily, the employees strike PG as more of the drop-out, need-a-job-now types who worry that waiting tables in a restaurant would be too much work. At least, when you go home after your shift in the bookstore is finished, you don’t smell like french-fry oil.

Given the existence of Amazon, even bookstores in smaller communities where they’re the only bookstore in town don’t have much real pricing power. If they can sell pastries from a local bakery or even a local grocery store, they may earn higher profits from those sales than from books.

This situation is not just a reflection of the Amazon effect, however. When PG first learned that bookstores could return unsold copies of books to the publisher (via the distributor) for full credit, that was his first clue that the book business had significant built-in problems.

PG would be happy to know if any other class of retailers can routinely return as many unsold goods as they wish to the manufacturers without paying anything for the privilege of doing so after the goods had been handled, picked over, etc., by a significant number of prospective buyers.

27 thoughts on “How can independent bookstores begin to pay their booksellers a fair and living wage?”

  1. The OP describes fundamental problems across all leisure industries. It’s not just bookstores by any means.

    I don’t need to go back to my misspent youth of record stores for examples, either. Consider cinema (the ticket agents, concession-stand employees whose “fringe benefit” is sneaking in on slow days, in days gone past the projectionists); restaurants (do you know how much a line cook, at even a pretty snazzy restaurant, actually makes? let alone the visible staff); art galleries; theatre; professional sport; the list goes on. “Leisure for profit”… doesn’t profit everyone. Or, indeed, almost anyone.

  2. Its not just leisure industries: it’s pretty much all entry level jobs in low margin businesses.

    Employment in recent decades has become very added-value aware and not enought entry level employees have been up-skilling (new word for me) so, pre-pandemic, supply and demand limited salary growth. After all, minimum salary most often also defines maximum salary at the entry level. Law of unintended consequences yet again.

  3. This makes about as much sense as worrying about the career prospects for snack-sellers at the corner 7-11. There are none. Same with book sellers. People transition through on the way to somewhere else. Gas jockey, bagging groceries, stacking commodes, flipping burgers, cutting steel plates, life guard, bar tender, cleaning RR switch yards, tramp programmer… I have had failed careers in them all.

    But after reading about LA life guards, I probably missed an opportunity with that one.

    • The problem with the bookseller mythos is that bookselling staff isn’t supposed to be a stepping stone job. Or a dead end. Curator of culture should be highly regarded and paid accordingly. Or so goes the “books are special” narrative.

      Now, the pandemic government largesse has actually made $15 an hour minimum wages a defacto reality. (Yay?) Most businesses are responding by one or more of:
      1- raising prices
      2- reducing staff
      3- going away

      Bookstores:
      1- sell a product with the price printed on the cover
      2- already operate with minimal staff
      3- have been going away for years, with some surviving by passing tbe hat

      So, as per usual, if we take the OP title as a question, the answer becomes: no.

      • I actually worked in a bookstore – I believe it was a B.Dalton Bookseller in a mall, back in something like 1993, I believe.

        I LOVED books, then and now. But boy, I couldn’t stand that job. I mean, believe it or not, unpacking boxes and stocking shelves with books is rather un-glamorous. As is standing at a cash register for four hour shifts.

        You don’t even get the cool ambiance that someone at a record store (or some other cool mall hangout) would get. I mean, at least in a record store, you could listen to the music. Maybe, possibly, you might be able to recommend a book here or there, but just as often as not, I’d get the evil eye from the manager for pausing in my book-stocking work.

        Anyone who is trying to sell the “romance” of a working at a bookstore – whether it’s the book section of a Walmart, or the most candle-filled, coffee bean smelling, wind chime tinkling, bean-bag chaired book shop on the planet – or some wooded side street in some quaint little town in Oregon -has an agenda to push.

        I can almost guarantee they did NOT work at a bookstore. At least, not a profitable one.

        • Heh. In an earlier life I actually worked the book section of Walmart as an outside vendor. You speak truth. As a bonus, I was the guy who ripped the covers of mass market paperbacks and threw the books in the dumpster. This took some getting used to, but I got over it pretty quickly. In general, the system was set up so whether or not the individual doing this work was a “book person” was pretty much irrelevant. It was all algortithm-driven.

          • I did that too! I remember doing the same thing in the back of the B. Dalton I worked at. Insane. There were dozens of boxes of unsold books. And instead of selling them at discount, they destroyed them. And, at the time, I highly doubt we were even recycling the paper. /smh

            Books are wildly entertaining forms of escapism of a fashion that go back hundreds of years.

            Bookstores…are not.

    • Yeah, you need to take Lifeguard off your list. From my direct experience, lifeguarding—at least in Southern California—is a serious career. Dozens in L.A. County make $200K+ annually.

      • You piqued my curiosity there…

        True, some do have salaries that are $200K+ (nearly $400K with their perks and benefits). But I would note that they have titles like “Acting Chief Lifeguard” and “Captain.” Definitely not at the “common worker” level. This is somewhat like looking at the compensation of a VP at Barnes & Noble, and applying it to the people filling the shelves at the local store. (These aren’t necessarily “lifeguards,” either – the Forbes article I referenced says that the most recent recipient of the Medal of Valor only makes $135K – total compensation.)

        The average base salary, according to salary.com, is around $34K (when average pay across all work in California is just about $80K). Some of the “regular” people do make $100K+ a year – but that is with accessing copious overtime, which is also usually a perk of someone who has been on the job for many years.

        Wups, just corrected that – highest paid “lifeguard” in California is making nearly $400K. That’s the guy with the title “Acting Chief Lifeguard.”

        • I was responding to the prior comment about “career prospects.” Lifeguarding—at least on California beaches—is a career. I personally know people who have been (or had been) in it for 20+ years.

  4. I think the common thread here (and I’ll add to it) – retail in general (with few exceptions, like perhaps Wal-Mart, or perhaps car, furniture, or appliance sales, if you include those) have very few opportunities for supporting a family any longer.

    But, retail jobs (by and large) were never meant for long-term employment (unless you started going up the managerial ladder). Outside of managerial positions, those jobs have been used as an entry point into the work force, and for the most part, are part-time. Typically, those employees are picking up those jobs as a second job for additional income, or they are also students (who will eventually earn their way to other positions, making more money in other sectors of the economy).

    I don’t mean this callously, and on top of that, retail jobs are a *shrinking* job market – and have been for a long-time. Between automation (which could even include the economies of scale and efficiencies created by fast food outlets like McDonalds and B.K. that go back 60+ years now) to Amazon, or even self-service gasoline.

    But our economy has shifted and lifted more people OUT of those kinds of jobs. We are a service economy, though there’s a good argument for getting back into good paying manufacturing, for security reasons, even if the costs go up a bit.

    Pew Research has data that points out that based on world standards, only 2% of the US population can be considered “poor”. And obviously, most of the population are upper middle class or higher compared to world standards.

    As our current border attests, to be poor in the U.S. is to be in many, many other countries. The U.S. has created innumerable jobs, and not just here, but around the world, what with the Internet (and I’m going to just ignore how many jobs are internet based) except for one easy one – call centers. The US employees hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, raising their standard of living in countries like Argentina, the Philippines and India.

    This obsession with “livable wage” will primarily do one thing in this country. Put those part-timers out of work, and increase inflation. It will also send more of those jobs to those Indians, Argentinians and Filipinos (to name a few).

    With someone with kids who will soon be looking for some of that part-time work – they don’t NEED $15/hour. And, fact is, they likely won’t get it. Point being, if the minimum wage were raised, why would someone hire a 16-year old kid?

    So we’re also eliminating job opportunities so that ONLY people with degrees or extensive experience will be able to make a “livable” wage.

    (PS. Please refer back to age old wisdom called “the law of unintended consequences).

    • Agree on most things, but two things:

      1- The US is getting back into manufacturing but it’s 21st century style. And it is happening because it is *cheaper* than the late 20th cheap labor way. There are many elements going into it but the biggest drivers is additive manufacturing, cheap energy (because of fracking), and lower transportation costs. This was going on before the pandemic but that has been the tipping point for even more businesses. The new supply chain model is “diversify your supply chain” and “build where you sell”. One outfit to keep an eye on is ARRIVAL.

      https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/arrival-ev-van-startup-will-build-second-us-microfactory-to-meet-ups-order/ar-BB1eMEiW

      2- Up-skilling isn’t just about college degrees. Tech schools, vocational courses, and on the job training count too. There is a crying need for craftmen, truck drivers, and dozens of careers. What they all have in common is discipline, commitment, and reliability.

      Automation is killing and will continue to kill unskilled jobs as they make less and less sense. Survival requires adaptation. The unskilled masses you see at the border are chasing the past: the kind of exploitative jobs that depend on the undocumented are among the first that will go. And the more the old schoolers fight it the more enticing the new approaches will become. A classic example of the Law of Unintended Consequences, just like the $15 minimum wage is making AI drive tbrough windows viable for fast food stores. (Ongoing.)

      The future isn’t just inexorable, it is here.

      • I drilled that into my children’s heads: you can’t count on a job – you have to keep learning and it is likely the jobs will get more and more automated, so you need the tech skills to do the automating.

        The days of your uncle getting you into the union, and the union protecting your job forever (steel, anyone? coalmining?) are over, as is the ‘good living’ those jobs used to provide. Although we still have it for fire fighters and those in the military long enough to put in the required years.

        • Tiny story… back in the ’60s in college, I needed a summer job in Pittsburgh, PA, visiting my parents. Was having no luck until a neighbor up the street said he’d take care of it. He was a union man, and I was soon working in the gigantic J&L steel mill downtown. What an experience that was watching the blast furnace do its thing! Now that’s all gone and the site of that blast furnace now houses the Pittsburgh Technology Center.

  5. Things didn’t work that well in the past either.

    The Bookshop Trailer #1 (2018) | Movieclips Indie
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCBww5YPfO0

    – The rich woman who shut everything down is a good example of a “villain”.

    Based on the book:

    The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

    For an example about the future of “entry level” jobs, and paying the bills — used in fiction — read the novels:

    Daemon and Freedom(TM) by Daniel Suarez

    I read the novels many times a year, and they scare the hell out of me.

    Then there is the documentary:

    Inequality for All
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvAFPHLFMa0

    The documentary was ten years ago, and was ignored at the time because it went against the “talking points” being pushed by the “Evil Geniuses” that are gutting this country.

    The Suarez novels hit too close to home based on today’s reality. They came out about the same time as Inequality for All.

    I need to read them again.

    • The problem with the leveler handwringing is other, economic, data points in a different direction:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqowS-hlZ3M

      China works the old, labor intensive way. And is falling *further* behind the US. Because workers are a finite resource. And the old ways make your business, regardless of size, less competitive because the old ways are more expensive and less productive. B&N is a lot bigger that the “shop around tbe corner” but it faces the exact same challenges: rising rents, rising labor costs, limited shelf space, limited control over price. They can only stock so many titles, they can only fire so many employees, tbey can only raise prices so much. And they still can’t compete with the reach and efficiency of online.

      Over in Boca Chica Texas amazing stuff is happening; an entire new business is being born. (It’s being livestreamed on youtube 24×7!)
      Awesome structures and devices are being built: by welders, crane operators, cement masters, truck drivers. Three shifts a days. Tbey’re not working for peanuts and they don’t have paper certificates. But when the next generation of moon rockets go uo, they’ll tell their kids “I built that”. And it wasn’t politicians or activists but hard working skilled people. Tbat’s how you build the future. For yourself and yours.

      The US inequality is the result of businesses evolving and becoming more effective, more efficient, while a significant part of the workers are failing to evolve along with the demand for skills.

      Because the total number of jobs isn’t decreasing, it’s increasing. There are millions of unfilled skill jobs out there. If the workforce doesn’t level up, the need will be filled by either brain drain or automation. The economy is *not* going to freeze in place to accomodate the unskilled, no matter what activists and IdiotPoliticians™ might pretend. It can’t do that without stalling and hurting *everybody* not just the unwilling unskilled.

      The answer to the “living wage” issue isn’t to inflate the heck out of low end products and services, but to help the willing unskilled become skilled, and bring more value-add to a job than merely a pair of hands and a strong back. Because robots bring tbat and tbey don’t need potty breaks or unionize or have kids they need to take to the doctor. On the other hand, the robot mechanic or 3D printer supervisor produces more than enough value to justify the high salary and perks the job commands.

      The unwilling unskilled?
      That is a problem for social workers, not armchair economists. 🙂

      Just remember that at the height of the 90’s productivity boom, the US reached and started to exceed “full employment” with companies hiring even “unemployables”, who ended up proving why they were unemployable; unreliable attendance, unwilingness to follow protocols (even safety ones), showing up drunk or stoned. Note tbat the 90’s boom was driven by computerization which had a net positive job creation balance despite killing literally millions of jobs. The composition of the workforce changed but the size grew and so did the salaries of the value-add employees.

      Looking at economic inequality is only looking at half or less of the real issue: the failure of tbe education systems to adjust to the post-industrial world. The world where ditch diggers or checkout counter operators could earn a middle class living doesn’t exist anymore. And it’s not because of “eeevile” corporations doing needless harm to exploit the workforce, but rather because the corporations are being squeezed themselves. Bookstores aren’t the only business with minimal profit margins; supermarkets operate on low single digit margins, always looking for ways to boost traffic, cut costs, add new services. (Delivery is a growth area for most by now.) B&M retail is also challenged. Aerospace. Car builders.

      Meanwhile companies that are growing and expanding sare also challenged but to find the skilled workers tbey need. Amazon doesn’t offer free tuition to employees willing to upskill out of kindness but out of need. The skilled labor market, like the oil market, is a pooled resource. Increasing the supply helps you even if the people you train don’t stay with you; increasing the supply increases the odds of you meeting your needs out of tbe broader pool. And Amazon isn’t unique. They just publicize it because their needs are bigger.

      Fretting about “inequality” is worrying about a rash without doing anything to deal with tbe virus causing it. In tbis case the cause is known but it is more politically useful to talk about tbe sympthom than to address the root cause. Be ause if you solve the problem, and it is solvable, they won’t have an issue to run on to accrue power.

      • As used today, there has never been equality at any place or any time in history. There never will be. Impossible.

        The first guy who stood up and gazed over the tall savanah grass at the grazing prey started it. Then the second guy started whining that the first guy ate better than he did.

        • The only form of equality for 100% of humanity lies in the grave.
          As long as any single person has even a shred of control over tbeir fate their will be inequality. As the joke says, you don’t have to be faster than the charging lion, just faster than the guy next to you.

      • I think you mean “grocery store” in that, Felix. I had occasion to look at Kroger the other day – true, their gross “groceries” margin (which includes the butcher, but not the delicatessen or bakery) was 1.3% last year.

        But they are a “supermarket” chain – which had a margin of a decent 23.32%. (Excluding their fuel centers.)

        Most of that is from “non-grocery” sales, I believe, although I can’t find a breakdown of things like shampoo and cat food versus the “value add” parts like the bakery, deli, pharmacy, etc.

        • Pretty much.
          I was referring to their core business rather than the addons, which vary from chain to chain and often store to store.
          A lot of supermarkets lease some of tbeir space to other businesses (laundries and banking seem fairly common, flowers too) and have added prepared foods and delis, much as bookstores have added coffee and pastries or toys and trinkets.
          They are replacements for their core business, no? Carving out chunks of tbeir floor space for margin sweetners.
          The company survives but core remains as unprofitable as ever because they’ve already cut everything tbey can in it. And the sweetening can only go so far before tbey’re no longer in the core business. Which some bookstores have effectively done.

  6. People are generally paid at least partly based on how fungible they are. If a position can be easily trained, and there is a steady supply of people to take that job, it won’t pay much. A job that needs difficult to acquire skills from a limited population of qualified (and available) applicants will pay more. Michael Jordan made a lot of money because he he had exceptional skills and there was only one of him.

    It doesn’t take long to teach someone how to open boxes and stock books, and (except for our current economic situations) there is usually someone available to take the place of such an employee who leaves for greener pastures, as is somewhat expected. When people don’t leave for greener pastures they have what my kids call “a YOU problem”.

    The pay is not low because the bookseller can’t afford to pay more – it’s low because the bookseller doesn’t HAVE to pay more. Such is the way with most unskilled jobs. Supply and demand.

    • Well, book businesses like profits as much as any other so the least tbey can pay is tbey most tbey will willingly pay. We’re agreed there.

      But businesses do come with hard limits based on consumer traffic, product margins, and operating costs. Those cap tbeir ability to chase workforce expectations and bookstores have less pricing flexibility than most other retailers because their suppliers are limited (one, actually) and their product price flexibility is limited, but their costs (rent, utility, taxes, book wholesale prices) aren’t. So in tbat respect, books really are “special”.

      When booksellers complain tbat a doubling of the minimum wage would put them out of business, I’m inclined to believe them. Mostly because if tbey had margin to spare they would be using it to compete even slightly on price, if not against online, against B&N. And because of the way at which they’ve been steadily going out of business for over a generation. And nothing I see looks to be cutting them a break., from publishers, distributors, landlords, or governments.

      As the magic 8 ball would say “all signs point” in tbe same direction.
      And it’s not a good one.

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