Future shocks
Occasionally, someone asks how [waves hands] all this affects the shop -- tariffs, raids, DEI rollbacks, dustbinning of entire federal departments, et cetera. And the short answer is, I don't know. I can't know, yet. None of us can.
The longer answer is that Exhibit B. has a unique combination of vectors that, after four years, still makes it tricky for me to predict how any given greater-world circumstance, or combination of them, is going to affect the shop. Secondhand true crime follows some logical cause/effect, sometimes -- a Netflix series everyone's bingeing will give that case an uptick, as I've seen with OJ materials this past couple weeks; there's a handful of cases and classics that always move -- but other times, not so much.
The election itself, for instance. Sales fell off a cliff for the rest of November 2024. Kennedy-iana usually picks up around mid-November, or has most years; not in '24. (Small surge during the RFK Jr. hearings.) Secondhand true crime generally is sort of...random, I guess, as to what old Datelines or documentaries people are going to get sucked into.
But it's also pretty stable, so that lull was disquieting, although based on anecdotal conversations, it wasn't confined to bookstores, or even retail; all industries kind of staggered that month.
And it's stable compared to general-interest and new-book shops. I don't get a holiday swell, but I don't get a January desert, either, and things that will affect my esteemed colleagues at BookMark Shoppe won't usually affect me. I'm a sole proprietor, and at the moment it's just me, no employees. Tariffs that send the price of printed material up are not great publishing-wide, but my ABA membership "lane" means I can't have more than 25 percent new books, so for me that isn't fatal. Some packing materials I use might come from China, so I'll have to switch brands or recycle more; also not fatal.
Depending on what President Musk does with/to the USPS, shipping could get pricier, and nobody loves having to adjust to/for those upticks..but those too are fairly predictable. It jumps 28 cents, people flinch and empty their carts, a couple weeks go by and they forget about it.
And at the end of the day, the people who get high and scroll eBay for Ed Gein materials are what Tony Soprano would have called a recession-proof demo.
A sharp, system-wide economic contraction is another matter. At first, a secondhand retail concern will benefit from a downturn, because it's an easy place to economize, but if an egg costs two bucks and keeps costing two bucks, that's a wrap (as it were) on non-library reading for many people. I don't know what happens to Exhibit B. in that event. Maybe I become a library.
I'll figure it out when I get there. Meantime, you've still got a few days on that new-book-smell discount -- and search help is always free.