[ShareTompkins] Community Buy-Out of Buffalo St. Books
Donald Austin
austin at ithaca.edu
Tue Feb 22 14:51:30 UTC 2011
I could commit two shares.
Don Austin
On 2/21/2011 9:38 PM, Franci Saunders wrote:
> Amen to all that! I can go a share as well.
>
> On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 7:14 PM, Amy Walton <alwalton23 at hotmail.com
> <mailto:alwalton23 at hotmail.com>> wrote:
>
> I would love to see this happen. I'd be in for a share or two.
> alwalton23 at hotmail.com <mailto:alwalton23 at hotmail.com>
> Amy Walton
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> From: mberman116 at hotmail.com <mailto:mberman116 at hotmail.com>
> To: darasilvermanus at gmail.com <mailto:darasilvermanus at gmail.com>;
> tc-hsc-l at cornell.edu <mailto:tc-hsc-l at cornell.edu>;
> sharetompkins at lists.aktivix.org
> <mailto:sharetompkins at lists.aktivix.org>
> CC: bobproehl at gmail.com <mailto:bobproehl at gmail.com>;
> village-plus-tree at ecovillage.ithaca.ny.us
> <mailto:village-plus-tree at ecovillage.ithaca.ny.us>
> Subject: RE: Community Buy-Out of Buffalo St. Books
> Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2011 07:08:22 -0500
>
> Great thinking. I would support for two shares.
> Monty Berman mberman116 at hotmail.com <mailto:mberman116 at hotmail.com>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2011 16:26:15 -0500
> Subject: Community Buy-Out of Buffalo St. Books
> From: darasilvermanus at gmail.com <mailto:darasilvermanus at gmail.com>
> To: tc-hsc-l at cornell.edu <mailto:tc-hsc-l at cornell.edu>;
> sharetompkins at lists.aktivix.org
> <mailto:sharetompkins at lists.aktivix.org>
> CC: bobproehl at gmail.com <mailto:bobproehl at gmail.com>
>
> /Hey All,/
> /I got this on facebook and and re-posting it here. PLEASE forward
> widely.
> /
> /Send replies to bobproehl at gmail.com
> /
> /-Dara Silverman/
> /------------------------------------------------------------------------
> /
> /I am an employee of Buffalo Street Books, having worked as
> outreach coordinator here for roughly the past year. The opinions
> expressed below are entirely mine and not those of the owner,
> other employees of Buffalo Street Books. /
> /Also, when I refer here to independent local bookstores, I am
> referring quite specifically to comprehensive new bookstores. This
> is in no way meant to denigrate the importance of any of the
> fantastic used bookstores in town, nor of Colophon Books or either
> of the on-campus bookstores. /
> /What I am going to propose here is not a bailout. The
> unfortunate truth is a bailout at this stage would be a temporary
> fix. I am proposing that the community buy out the bookstore and
> run it on a cooperative model. /
> Here we are at the wake. For the past few days, I have sat quietly
> by while people queue up to express their sympathies regarding the
> closing of Buffalo Street Books, announced last Thursday. There
> have been three prevalent lines of discussion, each one of which
> bears a bit of looking at.
> 1. What the hell happened?
> 2. This is a terrible loss for the city of Ithaca (or the variant,
> this is disgraceful for the city of Ithaca).
> 3. If Ithaca can’t support a local independent bookstore, who can?
>
> Yes, it is a terrible loss. But is it a quantifiable loss? It’s
> not as if it will suddenly become impossible to buy books in
> Ithaca. No book that you could have gotten on our shelves will now
> become utterly inaccessible, I promise you.
> In addition to simply providing a excellent selection of books, a
> local independent bookstore provides the community with readings
> by local and national authors, facilitates reading groups that are
> open to the community, hosts benefits for worthy local agencies,
> provides performance and rehearsal space for local theater groups
> and sells books to local libraries and schools at deep discount or
> at cost. Perhaps most importantly, we provide a space in the
> center of the community where literary arts can flourish.
> Of course, none of these things bring in revenue, and all of them
> are a little tricky to put a price tag on. But I would submit that
> everyone who has ever bought a book in an independent bookstore
> has done just that. If you buy a $30 hardcover at an independent
> rather than at Barnes & Noble or Amazon, either of which might
> carry the same book at 50% off, you have said it is worth $15 to
> you to have all of the benefits of a local independent bookstore.
> If we imagine that Amazon is selling every book it has at an
> average of 20% off (this number drops precipitously if your
> interests stray from the mainstream), then by buying your books at
> a local independent, you are saying it is worth 20% of your book
> budget to have that independent there.
> Beyond the concrete, there is serendipity of place unique to a
> local bookstore. It’s an environment where everything on the shelf
> has been hand selected by someone in the store, a member of the
> community. Any Borders will look like any other Borders, even if
> they go through the trouble of tacking on a local interest
> section. In a local independent bookstore, the whole store is a
> local interest section. Part of the magic of a local bookstore
> isn’t finding what you came in for, but finding something you
> never knew existed in the first place. By providing a space for
> readers to meet authors, authors to meet authors, poets to meet
> playwrights and so on in endless combination, a local independent
> bookstore waters the seeds of talent within a literary arts community.
> Let’s move back to question one, which will quickly bring us to
> question three and the variant of question two.
> What happened was that the business was losing money. Every year,
> something new got tried and every year, things worked out about
> the same. Gains in one area were barely enough to compensate for
> losses in another. And as will inevitably happen in a situation
> like this, the owner, who I have the utmost respect for, got tired
> of lifting the load by himself.
> Was it a poorly run business? Not at all. It was innovative and
> perceptive in a quickly changing market. There was a constant
> search for options that would save the store. A program was
> developed to sell books to students on both campuses that has been
> wildly successful. The store has managed to become an integral
> part of nearly every aspect of the local literary community, has
> established an online presence and has explored every possible
> solution that would have staved off the situation we find
> ourselves in now.
> Believe me when I tell you that the store was in an ideal spot to
> survive.
> Included in the options explored was the idea of converting the
> bookstore to a not-for-profit model. This would mean the
> bookstore itself would run about the same, but the owner or our
> staff would run a constant capital campaign to make up the
> difference between sales and operating costs. This move would have
> been unprecedented, but it looked to be a long road ahead and one
> we were unlikely to reach the end of.
> The fact of it is, the market will not support a local independent
> bookstore in a town the size of Ithaca. It simply won’t. It is
> easy enough to blame everyone who spends their money on Amazon or
> Barnes & Noble, who doesn’t wear their Shop Local pin proudly, who
> got a Kindle for Christmas. But that’s not the point. If you look
> at the terms of the market, it is inevitable that a local
> independent bookstore will fail in all but the largest markets. We
> can’t sell you a bestseller for 45% off. We can’t stock every
> title in print and some that aren’t. And that’s not going to
> change. The market has spoken and it has said, No, Ithaca does not
> get to have a local independent bookstore.
> But where is it written that the market dictates everything that
> goes on in our community? Why should it dictate? The thinking
> behind Local First at its heart asks the consumer to go against
> the natural drives of the market (where can I get it cheaper
> faster bigger) and to purchase in a way that supports less
> concrete advantages. In very few towns and cities has the Local
> First philosophy been taken more to heart. And still the market is
> squeezing local businesses out of our town.
> What is necessary in this case is for the community and its
> members to realize their power not as consumers, as players within
> the game of the market, but as a community. The market says an
> independent bookstore isn’t possible in Ithaca. It’s time for the
> community to have its say.
>
> Ithaca, if you want to have a local independent bookstore, I’ve
> got one for you. You’ve just got to come get it.
> Understand I’m not talking about a bailout. I’m talking about a
> community buy out. At the end of this process, the participating
> community, and I’m talking a cooperative of dozens if not
> hundreds, would own the bookstore outright.
> If you’re still reading, please keep in mind all the numbers below
> are highly approximate. But they should get the idea across.
> It would take somewhere in the range of $200,000 to buy out the
> bookstore, including everything on the shelves. For a while, I
> thought the way to do this would be to find ten people who truly
> believe Ithaca should have an independent bookstore downtown who
> each have $20,000 to sink in. But let’s face it, I don’t know ten
> people who have a spare $20,000. But what if we think about it
> differently? What if that amount was split into shares of $250 a
> piece. I know quite a few people with $250 who truly believe
> Ithaca should have an independent bookstore. And that amount could
> buy them one of 800 initial shares in an organization that would
> buy out and then own the bookstore. If they’ve got more, it could
> buy them a couple shares.
>
> I also know a number of people who don’t have a spare $250 but
> still believe Ithaca should have an independent bookstore. I’ll
> get to those people in a minute.
> If it works, what does it look like? It looks an awful lot like a
> corporation, one that would elect a board of trustees and hire a
> CEO. Like a corporation, shareholders would have a stake and a
> vote in major decisions regarding the future of the bookstore,,
> and, obviously, would receive a discount on books.
>
> Are you going to get that money back? No more than you’re going to
> get your PBS pledge back. What you’re doing with that money is
> helping to buy a present for your community. You’re saying not
> just that Ithaca wants an independent bookstore, but that it truly
> deserves one and will do what it takes to have one. And when this
> happens, that bookstore won’t belong to one person or a small
> group of business partners who have to share the heavy financial
> burden. It will belong to a community of member-owners, with each
> member lifting the weight they can.
> If it all works and Ithaca owns its own bookstore, what does year
> two look like? Or year five?
> Being approximate, let’s say the bookstore, left to its own
> devices, faces an annual shortfall of $100,000 a year. This,
> incidentally, is fractional to what an organization like the
> Hangar Theatre would face if their only source of income were
> ticket sales and they had to pay all of their ushers. This is
> where the folks with more time than money become part of the
> project. About half the above figure can be accounted for in labor
> costs, just to staff the desk. That cost could be offset by a
> committed corps of volunteers, each of whom “buy” a piece of
> ownership with their labor. A worker-owner would earn an equitable
> share of the store through his or her labor. Essentially, if each
> share is worth $250, a worker-owner could “buy” a share with
> twenty-five hours of labor.
> Which leaves us with a $50,000 shortfall. Fundraising campaigns
> and member drives would have to be run periodically throughout the
> year, every year. This is a daunting amount of work, but within
> this model, instead of a single owner and his staff of ten trying
> to make this happen, it would be a community of worker- and
> member-owners.
> I’m talking about a community buy out, and one that would need to
> get off the ground fast. If this bookstore closes, another one
> will not rise to take its place, I will practically guarantee it.
> The difference in start-up cost and effort between opening a new
> bookstore from scratch and buying out an existing bookstore is huge.
> And let me again stress, this is not a money-making opportunity.
> No savvy entrepreneur is going to exploit this newly created lack
> in the market because there is no lack in the market. The lack
> will lie in the community and it is in the community where it will
> be keenly felt.
> There are any number of adjustments and additions that can and
> should be made to this plan. I’m just throwing sparks onto a fire
> that is otherwise dying out. If they catch, it will be entirely
> due to you.
> If you believe this city needs and deserves a local bookstore; if,
> like me, you are appalled at the idea of living in a city without
> one; if you are ready to put your money and time where your
> mouth is; if you are ready for Ithaca to live up to its reputation
> rather than bask in it; if you are ready to be part of a community
> that decides for itself what it looks like, rather than allowing
> itself to be shaped by outside forces …
> … then let’s give it a try.
> At this point, I’m looking to gauge interest. And by interest, I
> mean willingness to commit financially. I’m just a poor kid, but
> I’m putting it out there right now that I’m in for $1000. Four
> shares. It’s what I can afford right now. There are 796 to go.
> Anyone interested in more information or in participating should
> please contact me at bobproehl at gmail.com.
>
>
> --
>
> ----
> Dara Silverman
> Consultant, Farmer, Yoga Teacher
> darasilvermanus at gmail.com
> dara at riseup.net
> 917-327-6528
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> *Franci Saunders *
> positivity, connectedness, adaptability
>
>
>
--
Don Austin
Assistant Director of Community Service
Ithaca College
607.274.3222 x3469
austin at ithaca.edu
"The explosion of stars is not reserved for ticketholders"
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