Interesting times

Apologies for radio silence - it's been quite the couple of weeks in the bookstore.

First the great news: March was our most profitable month in the store ever, since we opened back in 2022. It was also our best non-holiday month for sales, ever.

There are a bunch of reasons for the spike in sales - several good sized conferences came to town, the Indian Wells tennis tournament was interrupted by rain and sent folks in search of retail shelter, not to mention there's a continuing sense amongst locals and tourists alike that books might contain the answers to some of the madness gripping the world. We've also worked hard to re-merchandise the store to make sure we have more of the titles you want, and fewer of the ones you don't. Also, stickers!

In terms of profitability, that improvement is the result of a lot of work over the past few months - including cutting unnecessary costs, renegotiating our rent, and streamlining shipping and other processes to maximize efficiency. I've been absolutely determined that we'll enter the upcoming slow season in as secure a financial position as possible.

Which brings me to the less great news - not just for us, but for the whole world.

As a freshly-minted American citizen it's hard to describe the tangle of emotions I feel watching my new forever home declare economic and cultural war on the rest of the world. As a bookseller, it's slightly easier to articulate my feelings: A trade war is monumentally stupid, either as economic policy or negotiation strategy. The result will be horrible for customers, retailers, manufacturers, importers, and exporters. America will be made ungreat.

In terms of publishing and bookselling specifically: Kids books and cookbooks and other full-color titles will likely be rendered either unavailable (if they're printed outside the US, say in China or Mexico) or unaffordable (if publishers decide to print them here instead). International mail order, even across the border to Canada, will be financially ruinous for sellers and buyers. Even domestically printed paperbacks will likely see a price hike as imported paper is slammed by import surcharges. Publishers will take fewer risks on new authors, and print fewer copies. The industry already operates on impossibly thin margins. What's more impossible than impossible?

And that's assuming there's anyone actually able to buy new releases. For many people, books are considered a luxury, which means they buy fewer of them in a recession. Here in Palm Springs we are lucky to have thousands of part time residents who split their time between here and Canada. Westjet just cut its flights from Canada to PSP, citing fewer Canadians traveling to the region, and many already here leaving early. Who can blame them?

Combine those two factors - fewer customers, with less spending power - and, even without the kind of record temperatures we saw last summer, the next few months are likely to be economically fraught for us, and for every other retailer in the Coachella Valley.

But back to the good news: As our March numbers show, the fundamentals of our little bookstore are rock solid. Palm Springs is a city that READS and loves to support small businesses. It's also a city that's growing fast - new housing developments are springing up every month, and the 168-room Thompson Hotel just opened its doors to meet growing tourist demand. As we saw during COVID, there are fewer better cities in which to shelter from a world in chaos and crisis. When international travel feels daunting then Palm Springs is the perfect accessible escape.

Meantime our wonderful local customers are doing everything they can to improve our chances of surviving the coming months relatively unscathed. Over the past few days I've had at least a half dozen conversations with regulars who came in to buy giftcards for themselves as a way of pre-paying for books they'll need in June, July, and August. We've seen a mini spike in mail-order sales via bestbookstore.com as snow birds who have already left town continue to shop with us remotely. Pre-sales of tickets for next year's Festival have been brisk. And, he notes with all due modesty, hundreds of folks have already pre-ordered my upcoming book which helps support the store and keep me out of debtors' prison. (If everyone reading this newsletter pre-ordered a single copy then it'd likely be a New York Times bestseller on publication week. I'm. Just. Saying.)

All of which means I'm not quite ready to predict a good summer in the bookstore, but on balance I'm still slightly more confident than I was this time last year. Which, given the new global reality, is really saying something.