[ShareTompkins] Community Buy-Out of Buffalo St. Books

Tue Feb 22 15:19:56 UTC 2011

Please take all these responses off list--the email to which you need to
reply (bobproehl at gmail.com) is at the end of the original message. Do
not just do a regular reply. Thank you.

>>> Donald Austin <austin at ithaca.edu> 2/22/2011 9:51 AM >>>
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>
wrote:

I would love to see this happen.  I'd be in for a share or two.
alwalton23 at hotmail.com 
Amy Walton
From: mberman116 at hotmail.com
To: darasilvermanus at gmail.com; tc-hsc-l at cornell.edu;
sharetompkins at lists.aktivix.org
CC: bobproehl at gmail.com; 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

Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2011 16:26:15 -0500
Subject: Community Buy-Out of Buffalo St. Books
From: darasilvermanus at gmail.com
To: tc-hsc-l at cornell.edu; sharetompkins at lists.aktivix.org
CC: 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 x3469austin at ithaca.edu
"The explosion of stars is not reserved for ticketholders"

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