This paper, “Building Next-Generation Bookstores: The Case”, was written in early 2021 as the original impetus behind Reimagining Bookstores.
Since its writing nearly five years ago, many of the societal issues we outlined have increased in magnitude and urgency, and the industry itself has seen some noteworthy developments. Accordingly, our thinking around this initiative to build Next-Generation Bookstores has evolved. But the problems we face as booksellers have not changed fundamentally. This preface highlights a few important developments since then and clarifies how our thinking has evolved.
1. Inflation and the erosion of bookstore economics
Between 2021 and 2026, cumulative inflation in the U.S. has been substantial—on the order of roughly 25% overall. This is not an abstract number. It has a direct and corrosive impact on bookstores.
Bookstores operate on thin margins. When costs rise across rent, labor, inventory, and services, those increases are difficult to pass on to customers. The result is margin compression.
At the same time, inflation erodes the purchasing power of bookstore employees. Even when wages rise in nominal terms, they often lag behind real increases in the cost of living. As a bookstore employee you should be earning 25% more than five years ago just to maintain the same purchasing power. Inflation has widened the gap between what bookstores can afford to pay and what it actually takes to live in the communities they serve.
The underlying problem we identified in 2021 remains: a business model built on low margins cannot sustainably support living wages. Persistent high inflation has made that challenge more visible and more urgent.
2. Disinformation, media consolidation and a polarized society
Over the last five years, the information environment has degraded. There is a lot more content, but the signal-to-noise ratio has worsened, and as a society we have weaker shared facts. AI and bots have accelerated the spread of low-quality and misleading information. Trust in institutions is declining. Media consumption continues to be polarized and media consolidation has accelerated.
In a society so fragmented, the need for public spaces that promote literacy, reason, civility, discourse, science, compassion, curiosity and open-mindedness have the potential to be real lifelines for the communities they serve. Lifelines are filled with traffic because they provide essential services.
Bookstores are one of the few places where people can encounter ideas outside algorithmic feeds. In the current environment, local, trusted, in-person spaces are even more critical. The role of bookstores as trust-enhancing public spaces has become even more important.
3. Amazon and Barnes & Noble
Amazon’s position in the bookselling ecosystem continues to grow. It exerts significant influence across print book sales, ebook distribution, and audiobooks. For many publishers and authors, Amazon is the primary channel. For many consumers, it has become the default. Their extraordinary market power creates structural challenges for independent bookstores. Amazon shapes pricing expectations, hurts sales, and centralizes discovery of books in ways that are challenging to compete with. In addition, Amazon’s growing influence is carrying over to what books get published and therefore are available to bookstores.
Barnes & Noble presents a more mixed picture. Its recent stabilization and growth are positive. A healthy national bookselling chain can be good for the bookselling ecosystem. At the same time, some of their recent tactics make us question their true motives. We are particularly troubled by their acquisition of Tattered Cover in Colorado and Books, Inc. in the San Francisco Bay Area and continuing to operate them under their original local branding. The claim that these are still independent bookstores is misleading and seems designed to blur the line between independent and corporate ownership. Their thirst for growth is pushing them to open new bookstores often hurting existing independent bookstores in those communities.
Taken together, these corporate forces reinforce the same conclusion we reached five years ago: the current market structure does not naturally produce a diverse, locally rooted, and economically sustainable bookstore landscape.
4. “Resurgence” in the number of independent bookstores
At its 2026 Annual Meeting the American Booksellers Association (ABA) reported that 2025 was “arguably the most challenging year for independent booksellers,” but also “a banner year.” It was the fifth consecutive year in which at least 200 new bookstores opened.
The organization’s membership has grown by 151% since 2020. There are currently 3,783 locations, operated by 3,417 member bookstores. ABA also reported having 149 member stores that are nonprofits.
Not all bookstores tend to be ABA members but ABA membership is widely accepted as a credible proxy for the health and vibrancy of the independent bookstore sector. The media has been quick to embrace this good news using words like revival, renaissance, comeback, boom, and recovery.
There is a lot to celebrate here and we also agree with ABA’s CEO Allison Hill, who has cautioned ““But as all of you know, the numbers (of bookstores) tell only part of the story.” There are many unanswered questions about this “resurgence.” What’s driving this growth? Are independent bookstores more or less resilient today than five years ago? Are new bookstores doing a better job of adopting sustainable new business models or are they mostly following the traditional reseller model that will keep them dependent on the commercial terms dictated by book publishers? We look forward to exploring these issues.
5. Top-down change or a decentralized movement
How do we create systemic change in bookselling? There is no single answer.
After years of evangelizing the hybrid and nonprofit models for bookstores and supporting many bookstores in embracing these ideas, we began concluding that a new national organization will be needed to fund and scale new business models. During 2020-21 we wrote this paper and discussed it with bookstore leaders and other stakeholders in online workshops.
Soon after, our thinking evolved. We saw the potential for a more decentralized approach, one driven by many actors working in parallel rather than a single coordinating entity.
This led to the inaugural convening of Reimagining Bookstores in October 2021. Our goal was simple: bring together people who believe bookstores can be more than retail businesses, and invite them to initiate systemic change in our industry.
Around the same time, major philanthropic interest began to emerge. Efforts like those supported by Emerson Collective signaled that bookstores were starting to be seen not just as businesses, but as a social cause worthy of investment. We saw Emerson Collective’s potential entry into this space as a huge opportunity for the movement and decided to help them as much as possible.
Five years later, the question of how best to create systemic change remains open. There is more activity. More experimentation. More capital. But we do not yet have a coordinated system capable of transforming the sector at scale.
That said, there is real progress worth celebrating! Many more nonprofit and hybrid model bookstores are opening. Existing bookstores are evolving their business models. More and more people are engaging with the idea that bookstores are civic and cultural institutions.
We remain optimistic. Systemic change rarely comes from a single design. It emerges over time, through many efforts, tested in the real world. The work now is to continue building, learning, and connecting so that these individual efforts begin to add up to something larger.
What follows is the original paper, written in 2021, which laid the foundation for this work and continues to guide our efforts.