The other day on social media, I saw an article in SF Gate about a San Francisco bookstore that decided it would no longer sell Harry Potter books. The store, Booksmith, told the reporter they didn’t want to contribute in any way to J.K. Rowling’s new foundation that provides funding for those fighting inclusion of trans people in single sex spaces.
Since I saw the story first on on social media, there were, of course, comments, one of which said it was “sad” that bookstores were “banning” books.
That’s ridiculous, of course. A bookstore is not obligated to stock any book it doesn’t want to, particularly since no bookstore – except maybe Amazon – can stock everything. All booksellers curate what they sell. That’s not banning.
Now generally most bookstores try to stock books that they think will sell well that are in keeping with the kind of store they want to be. A science fiction bookstore won’t bother with nonfiction bestsellers, but might well offer obscure editions by a revered author.
And many indie bookstores won’t sell small press books because the publishers can’t offer the return deals that big publishers give them. Both indie bookstores and small presses have tight budgets.
But bookstores, perhaps more than most businesses, reflect the taste of the people who own and run them, so it’s no surprise to me that a given store might decide not to stock books by an author they despise.
What makes it a story is that they said exactly why they’re doing it, instead of just not having the books in stock.
This reminded me of an old friend of mine, known all over the state of Texas as Tiger, though his given name was David, who for a couple of years in the late 1960s owned and ran a record store in College Station, Texas.
For those of you of the younger generations, this is before music came out on cassette tapes, much less CDs, much much less streaming. Vinyl wasn’t nostalgia; it was the whole ball game.
College Station is the home of Texas A&M University, which was a wildly conservative place in the 1960s, unlike its arch-rival, the University of Texas in Austin. A&M stands for “agricultural and mechanical,” which tells you it was a serious about farming and engineering (though it also had a good journalism program back in the day).
Tiger had gone off to A&M because the men in his family went to A&M, even though he’d been accepted at Rice. He lasted a couple of years, acquiring the nickname, and then gave up and started the record store right across the street from campus.
Now record stores are very much like bookstores in that they reflect the taste of their owners. And certainly no small shop can stock everything.
Tiger loved the rock music of the time. He had the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and even the favorite local band from Austin, Shiva’s Head Band.
What he didn’t stock – what he refused to stock – was country music.
His store was across the street from the most conservative state school in Texas in 1969 – an ag school to boot – and he wouldn’t stock country.
I think he made a couple of exceptions. I’m pretty sure he stocked Dolly Parton. And perhaps if he’d started his store a little later, after the cross-over of rock and country that blossomed in Austin in the 1970s, he might have widened his inventory to include outlaw country, especially Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.
But that didn’t exist yet when he had the store.
It will not surprise you to learn that he went broke. It was not a wise business decision. But given the politics of the time, and some of the country music of the time, it was a principled decision.
He was that kind of guy.
He died very young, not because of his principles, but because cancer sometimes goes after the young for reasons that make no sense.
I still miss him.
After he closed his store, he traveled all over the state of Texas, usually showing up on a friend’s doorstep at two in the morning with some great new music that they needed to hear. He was a gentle soul who followed his own path.
I suspect if he was still around he’d still have principles and that he’d understand a bookstore refusing to sell a particular author’s books because of who she has become.
Tiger! I remember him showing up at my garage apartment in Houston and getting me to come out and hear live music when I meant to be studying. Yes, a kind, gentle soul.
I thought you might remember him.
I would have liked Tiger a lot.
There are all sorts of reasons why a bookstore might not carry a given book. I once tried to special order a couple of my early Regencies at a book that did not carry romances. I figured “special order” was not the same as “stocking a whole area full of Love’s Towering Obsession” (it was the early 1990s) but the clerk I spoke to informed me that they didn’t carry “tacky little romances.” I went back and spoke to another clerk who was happy to special order my books for me, and told me that they didn’t carry romances at the store because they didn’t have anyone knowledgable enough on staff to curate such a section. A few years later they had a romance section–so I assume they hired someone who knew enough about romance to make it viable.
But no one is obliged to be all things to all buyers. Even Amazon (tho they might want to be).
He was a very good man and I suspect would have continued to be so.
I’m not sure what I’d refuse to stock if I ran a bookstore. There are a lot of writers — mostly, but not exclusively, US and UK white men — who I think are vastly overrated and I might not pay much attention to whether we had them in stock, but on the whole I think I’d be mostly inclined to put up displays where I waxxed enthusiastic over the books I love. There’s a new feminist bookstore in my neighborhood that has some selections that I think are kind of odd, but I think it’s basically a store that reflects the owner’s taste. Needs more science fiction. I keep meaning to talk to them about that. They like local authors, so maybe we can come up with a reading they’d like.