Are you IndieBound? We’re Going to Be.
Posted on March 7, 2010 by Vanessa
In 2008, the American Booksellers Association (with a membership comprising several hundred independent bookshops) launched their IndieBound programme with the intention of promoting the idea of shopping locally and with independent retailers, starting with bookstores. It’s a brilliant scheme and one which we’ve been watching for a while – we love the material they’ve produced to enable bookshops to explain why shopping indie is better sustaining the local community; the economy both local and national in the form of jobs and taxes; why it encourages entrepreneurship; makes use of people’s expertise and promotes diversity – after all, who only wants to shop at Tesco? Indiebound started with bookshops but has spread throughout neighbourhoods and is proving to be a really effective movement within America to celebrate the unique and independent. This piece on the ABA website shows how they launched it and what initial responses from booksellers were.
The neighbourhood of Edinburgh where our bookshops are – Bruntsfield – is largely made up of independent businesses ranging from cheese shops to a hardware shop to boutiques to restaurants to delis to florists to bakeries and a sports equipment shop. We have some chains of course – the pharmacy, the bank, the ubiquitous branch of Subway – but overall it’s a vibrant community where the quirky rubs shoulders with the practical and turnover of premises is comparatively low with vacant properties being snapped up. It’s an area which attracts students, actors, writers and artists as well as the usual Edinburgh inhabitants such as lawyers and bankers and the Indiebound ethos should be a perfect fit.
In the next month or two, the Booksellers Association will start rolling out Indiebound among its independent bookseller members and most people I’ve spoken to have been quite enthusiastic. It’s also something we’ve been advocating since last summer’s pathetic attempt to develop bookaholism as an industry-wide marketing concept (see how we suggested using the Eat, Sleep, Read slogan here).
However, the ABA’s campaign is uncompromising in it’s attitude that independent is good and chain is at best bland and at worst unethical and it will be interesting to see whether the BA can manage to maintain an ‘Indie is Better’ stance when they also include members with diametrically opposed views – WH Smith, Waterstone’s, Tesco etc. And those members are powerful; BA membership subs are calculated according to turnover so Tesco and Waterstone’s will be paying an amount which gives a lot more clout than those of us at the lower end of the scale.
I really want IndieBound to work and I firmly believe that we’re seeing the beginning of a resurgence in the fortunes of the independent bookseller but whether indies can thrive as part of a trade body which is trying to represent everyone or whether we need an organisation that is solely concerned with the needs of independent booksellers is something that will be need to be considered as we see how successful IndieBound UK is.
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2 Responses to “Are you IndieBound? We’re Going to Be.”
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March 8th, 2010 @ 9:04 am
Absolutely.
March 10th, 2010 @ 6:38 am
Stay there! We need you!I love my local Indie!