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Saturday, August 29, is Independent Bookstore Day, traditionally a one-day “national party” held at the end of April in indie bookstores across the country.
This year the event was rescheduled because of Covid-19. While we have a lot to be grateful for, we don’t quite feel like partying.

Nonetheless, The Reader asked us to write about the role and importance of independent bookstores, and we thought it would be a great idea to reflect on what it’s been like these past five months.

Everyone is struggling these days to push through isolation, navigating the grocery store, trying to stay off the continual, and often depressing, news cycles, worrying about loved ones near and far, searching for sanitizing wipes on sparse grocery store shelves.

And then there’s the additional, and very specific, stresses for us and our staff of running a small business in West Duluth during a national health crisis.

We sell books, and before the pandemic enjoyed a steady and refreshing stream of tasks and customer contacts that warmed our hearts, and affirmed our decision to relocate to Duluth, to this wonderful community. After all, in what other trade does one constantly and consistently meet customers with big smiles on their faces, words of love and encouragement, and who have a reverence for one’s product – books – almost akin to a religious fervor!

When the pandemic seemed to crash down on our heads at the beginning of March, our daily routine shifted and our workload has been reimagined and reinvented several times since.

Big believers in science, data, and the importance of community and social responsibility, we closed our doors to the public on March 16, even before we were told to do so.

Thankfully, our software featured integrated online sales. Who knew how important that would be!

Our initial anxiety of not knowing whether we would be able to survive, gave way to a flood of gratitude as we watched in amazement as our online orders grew by orders of magnitude. Our community and our customers had our back, and it was amazing.

With our manager Nikki and book-seller Melisa we reconfigured the store interior and became shipping experts. We debated about what size corrugated boxes to buy and the best packing tape to use.

As serendipity would have it, right before the pandemic we were planning to revamp the mystery section with bookcases on casters that would give us flexibility for opening up the store for large events. Alas, we had to cancel those events. But we were now able to clear out the middle of the store and set up long tables that were used for processing orders. We always sold books, and now we were selling books and making twice-daily trips to the post office with large bins full of packages.

Shelter-in-Place meant that we could only have one bookseller in the store at a time. But that person became a machine of efficiency and hard work, as we memorized postal rates, continued to answer calls and make recommendations over the phone, and clocked lots of miles walking back and forth through the store like the old days.

The Zenith Reads monthly book club moved to Zoom, and our Events calendar shrunk.

The next big change happened when we were allowed curbside service. We offered very safe, very distant curbside delivery, which meant that you would drive into our parking lot by our side door, a bookseller would bring your bagged book outside and place it in a bin, and then you could get out of your car – after we returned to the building – to pick up your books.

By now an additional bookseller returned to work, and so we revamped the staffing schedule to keep only the minimum in the store to allow for working and social distancing – always masked, of course.  

The tightrope was stretched a third time when we opened back to the public for reduced in-store browsing. Sneeze guards had to be set up, traffic flow planned along with ways to encourage social distancing and not squeeze people into small spaces – no small task for a relatively small “nookish” store.

We had to figure out how to take those huge shipping tables that had taken over the middle of the store and shrink them down so that we could open up to customers while at the same time maintain online sales and special orders.

And we had to become vigilant behind the counter – keeping track of how many bodies were in the store at all times, whether masks were being worn, and worn properly, and when bags of books had to be brought outside for curbside pickup.
Phone calls into the store have multiplied, as have the UPS deliveries and the email inquiries. And we’re doing it all with essentially the same staff.

We yearn nostalgic for the “good old days” of book-selling. You know: customer comes in, looks around, may or may not ask a question, may or may not make a purchase. Maybe they just sit down with a coffee from next door in a big comfy chair to read a chapter of their favorite book. Maybe they want to hang out at the register and schmooze about their latest read.

People’s schedules now are more strained, leisure and relaxation best experienced only at home. So we are all teaching ourselves to feel the smiles behind the masks that we cannot see directly.

And then there are the “little things” that get us through the day, like having great neighbors next door at Wussow’s Concert Cafe, who’ll bring us lunch or share in common, or the emails and phone messages of warmth and support that pop up randomly throughout the week; or that our staff is incredibly devoted and hard-working and that none of them, nor their families, have gotten sick; or the fact that our customers are so patient and understanding through postal delays and the inevitable occasional lost order or damaged package.

Our current holding pattern looks like this: reduced public hours, greater online sales and special orders, moving toward more virtual events.

Throughout it all always remember how lucky we are to be able to maintain a viable business in an industry where books are plentiful and in high demand and well as supply (try buying a bike right now, or those sanitizing wipes!) and to live in a community that values books, reading, and supporting local businesses.

It’s hard to know what the future will look like. Perhaps the most difficult part of all this is just the uncertainty of not knowing day to day. Perhaps we’ll return eventually to the “old way” of bookselling, although we suspect that the new “normal” may look very different from what has been.

We have gained experience and resilience in our ability to shift quickly between the three ways of operating that we crafted over the spring and summer.

We appreciate that the varying levels of lock-down allowed, for some, simply the gift of more time to read, not to mention the increased attention to issues of inequality and social justice which has driven so many recent book purchases and that help to deepen our understanding and empathy.

We cherish the vital role a locally-based bookseller can play when physical contact is strained and maybe even scary.

Our masks are on because we want you to stay healthy and we want to stay healthy so we can continue to be your bookseller. Our day has changed, for sure. But not our mission, nor our passion.

Angel and Bob Dobrow are the owners of Zenith Bookstore in West Duluth.