st louis « Robin Writes

Hey, SHTF peeps – it’s been a while, huh? Well, I’m a little busy with a lot of this-and-that going on, but I’m back now, and posing a question:

If you believe that a collapse (fill in your preference) is imminent, would you start a business? Would you continue to run your own business – probably yes, considering you know, income and all that? But most importantly, would you try to increase and build that business?

Okay, that was more than one question, but seriously – what I want to know is why, if you believe civilization as we know it could come to an end, you’d continue to strive to reach particular goals.

We opened our bookstore almost two and a half years ago, and now that we’re facing closing up shop in the next few weeks, I’m trying to pull together those two things: why struggle to stay open, if SHTF is coming? I mean, books aren’t going to be a priority right after an apocalypse, although I can safely say that E-books are going to disappear as the grid goes down and “charging a device” becomes obsolete. All those folks who proudly disdained paper books are gonna be really, really sorry!

Now, depending upon how long the immediate crisis lasts, and for many people it will be an ONGOING crisis, just to obtain food, water, and shelter – not to mention medical care, self-care of course – and others will work long, hard hours just to survive, but eventually books will be back in vogue.

And needed. After all, I doubt school will be session, right? The schools we have now, that is. And kids will still need to learn, adults will still need entertainment as well as lifelong learning. And new skills.

So at some point, books will be back, and popular, and necessary.

In the meantime, how do you reconcile what you do now with SHTF? If you work for someone else, obviously it’s a paycheck. Which you can use to prepare for the future. But a business? What’s the point?

Kinda feel like we have a really awful disease and everyone is gathered ‘round to weep and wail, choosing their outfits for the funeral, planning the wake.

I’m not opposed to a wake, mind you, in its proper time.

We’re still here! And it’s business as usual until February 1st. We still have great books, we still have local authors on the shelves – 130+ – and we have events booked for several weeks.

And we’re still hoping for a miracle.

If that doesn’t happen, and no, it doesn’t look good, THEN we’ll start marking down and moving stuff out the door. THEN. Not NOW.

When I said that *I* wouldn’t do a crowd funding campaign, it didn’t mean that I’m not doing everything I can to avoid closing up shop. I simply think these things have been done in STL, re bookstores at least, a whole heck of a lot in the past six months. Three of them come to mind, in fact.

So, as I said, business as usual until – or if? – the end actually does arrive. Local authors, you are certainly free to pick up your books at any time, as you always have been able to do, but I hope you’ll give us a bit more of a chance. Sold two of your books yesterday, actually. That’s a lot of books that can travel out the door before February 1st!