In Norfolk, Va., Prince Books never completely closed during the pandemic, owner Sarah Pishko reported. During the mandatory shutdown in the spring, she spent a lot of time "pleading with the staff at the governor's office" for the bookstore to be considered essential, citing the way customers were "rushing in" to get books. Eventually, she continued, she was told "not to worry about it," and could stay open with no more than 10 people in the store.
During those early months, Pishko and her team actively discouraged browsing and requested that customers "come in, get their books and leave." Masks have been mandatory for the duration, and the store has sneeze guards in place around all the registers. The store also started doing curbside pick-up, and that has been so popular that Pishko officially announced a few months ago that it is "here to stay."
Pishko noted that while a lot of other bookstores have been hurting due to the loss of in-person events, her store was "not on the A-circuit." She would do them, but they were never especially big. Her store suffered a bigger loss due to the lack of state agency sales, which have gone down due to budget cuts. The incredible surge this summer in the sale of antiracist titles and books by diverse authors, she continued, helped make up a lot of the difference.
When asked about buying, Pishko said she never went month-to-month. And while she was cautious in the beginning, she is now reordering "more than I used to," and especially is bringing in more backlist.
The store had a "great November," and Pishko made a big early shopping push last month. Some of the major titles so far, along with A Promised Land, have been Jerry Seinfeld's Is This Anything? and Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline, and cookbooks in general have been big. So far, Pishko added, she has not run into any major supply chain issues this holiday season.
Pishko also wanted to note that the ABA, and the IndieCommerce team in particular, has done a "spectacular job" keeping the online machinery going. It's been huge for the store, and it's "amazing" how much of a "big deal" it's become.
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Since reopening to browsing in early May, Oxford Exchange in Tampa, Fla., is seeing better foot traffic now than earlier in the pandemic, but it's still down from last year, bookstore and programming director Laura Taylor reported. When the store first reopened, the restaurant was operating at reduced capacity, but is now back to nearly 100% capacity.
Masks have been required since the store reopened, and while there were some "reluctant" customers and community members early on, there have been hardly any issues recently. She noted that although there are not a lot of restrictions being imposed in Florida, people seem to be "playing it safe on their own."
The store has had a lot of success with direct partnerships with various authors, and online sales in general are a "much bigger chunk of overall sales." Oxford Exchange has also "really converted" to virtual events. While they don't generate book sales the way in-person events do, Taylor said, they are easier to host and draw wider audiences, especially for the store's book clubs. And despite so many people talking about experiencing "Zoom fatigue," that doesn't seem to be the case for a lot of older folk, as their attendance has gone up.
When it came to ordering for the holidays, Taylor and her team were more aggressive on books they knew would sell, including A Promised Land and a variety of children's Christmas titles. There was not a lot of early holiday shopping, Taylor added, though the store did wrap its first gift book on the day after Halloween. There was much more holiday shopping over Thanksgiving weekend, but it's still been a bit slow to take off.
Taylor supposed that the surge of cases in Florida might be putting a damper on people's holiday shopping, even though customers seem to be "really embracing the holidays" this year. The store has also started to see more shipping problems, with things taking longer to arrive and a "definite lag" with a lot of customer service. --Alex Mutter