Have you seen Love Actually? There’s this little scene I like there.. I know, I know.. It’s yet another classic western corporate cliché, well packed and skillfully sold. But, you know what? It’s hoildays time, so let me get away with it, just this one time. The scene I am telling you about is, I guess, a quote or perhaps a loving appreciation for the famous Bob Dylan video with Allen Ginsberg in the background.
Well.. in the movie the guy says something like: “..because it’s Christmas (and at Christmas you tell the truth)”. I like this “tell the truth” part.. So.. let me pretend that you are that gorgeous blonde girl and I’ll be the guy with the tape recorder and a little confession to make. Here I go:

It was a nice Spring day when a person walked into the bookshop and asked for a book that we didn’t have. The classic situation: if we don’t have it in stock, we can order it for you. We check the price and availabilty and ask our potentional customer for order confirmation. Instead of confirmation, I was confronted with honestly innocent question: “Is this the cheapest I can get it for?” Now.. there’s so much to explain, there are so many details that should be added here in order to put all of this into the right perspective.. I’ll try to choose only the few.. it was obviously a non-bookish person, you could see there were all these other priorities in life that make reading books hardly even enter the top hundred necessities. The title of the book suggested it was an obligatory reading for school, university or work. It was far from desired reading or what I lovingly call predestined meeting of people and books. So here I was, looking into those eyes, trying to figure out what to do. Needless to say, it has been a slightly difficult year for us. Some of our customers switched to electronic books. Some decided it is cheaper and more convenient to order books online. And even the most beautiful and the most faithful customers experienced cuts in their budgets due to overall financial meltdown. The question hang in the air. I am not fond of lying. I simply stood there and contemplated the ethical values and practical consequences of an old fashioned bookseller advising an innocent, non-bookish person of the cheapest ways to obtain an undesired book.

Contemplating my technologically enhanced near-suicide has been pretty much what I’ve been doing in those seldom free moments of a dedicated parent and a small business owner during the past year. Once confronted with a proximate possibility of loosing it, I tried to think the true nature of my book-selling.

Financial meltdown set aside, my principal enemies are technologically driven online retailers. Technology in itself is neither good nor bad. It takes the same knowledge to create a nuclear weapon and a nuclear reactor. Technology is closely linked to a certain type of knowledge that is created by beautiful minds of scientists and fucked up by evil moguls of corporate capital. It is false to think that Book Depository and Amazon are involved in an activity even remotely similar to what we are engaged in. As far as I am concerned, the true nature of what they do is making money and the true nature of what we do is lighthouse keeping.

One of the questions that repeatedly came to our mailbox this year was a variation of “Why is this cheaper on Book Depository?” Here is a bit of copy-paste from my recent email trying to answer one such question:

Zanimivo je, da gostincu nihče ne ugovarja, da je kava pri njem deset ali dvajset krat dražja kot doma. Pivo je tudi dva do trikrat dražje kot v trgovini, pa vseeno radi naročimo še eno in še eno in na koncu celo razneženo in dobrovoljno pustimo še kaj natakarici. Gostincem zavidam, da ljudje preprosto in po občutku, skozi podzavestno, enostavno jasno sprejmejo in vedo (brez da racionalizirajo), kaj je dodana vrednost, kaj je gostinec naredil, vložil in kako si je zaslužil to razliko v ceni.

Pri knjigarnah je to bistveno težje, med drugim tudi zato, ker konec koncev sploh nismo vajeni teh knjigarn. Ni tako, kot z gostilnami, da je na vsakem vogalu vsaj ena. Knjigarne so tukaj redke in ni vse, kar se imenuje knjigarna, tukaj zares knjigarna..

A ja, pa še to: 11. julija 2011 je Amazon kupil Book Depository.. A ste Orwella že brali? Danes je to zelo aktualno.. Orwella je spet potrebno brati..

It is hard to see all that is at stake when someone is waving with a five euro banknote in front of your eyes with a flashy neon-lit “You Save:” inscription on it. The truth behind is ethically very questionable. It is killing healthy bio-diversity of thousands of small and not so small independent bookshops, each and every single one with a unique story to tell, books to curate, readers to hide from a winter chill. In words of John Updike: “Bookstores are lonely forts, spilling light onto the sidewalk.”

It is difficult for me to define, explain and defend the lighthouse aspect of our book-selling. It is hidden somewhere in the nature of a real space. If all is well maintained and properly orchestrated – this real space may occasionally transform into a magical place. The true meaning of independent is interdependent. We depend on you. Not only in the sense of “your money is your vote”. Your personalities are embedded into our shelves. We dance, spilling light onto the sidewalk. It is difficult to define and explain. I just know the magic is there. And I am thankful that you know it.
Happy New Year!