Following up on our earlier post today ... from the EV Grieve inbox...
ST. MARK’S BOOKSHOP RAISES $23,000 (AND COUNTING) ON LUCKY ANT
Two weeks ago Lucky Ant set out to help embattled St. Mark’s Bookshop finally make a real push towards financial sustainability. The goal was to raise at least $23,000 to help toward the cost of moving to a smaller store and develop the online presence needed to compete.
What happened?
With a few days to spare, St. Mark’s Bookshop surpassed their fundraising goal. They currently stand at $24,560 from 405 customers. The most popular pledge was the $100 and most of the support came locally (76% from New York). We did see support from all over the world including pledges from Japan, Australia, France and 7 other countries.
What’s next?
The bookshop raised the minimum they need to get the ball rolling on their transformation. The full cost of the move could cost up to $100,000 and we are keeping the pledging open until the deadline this Friday night at 11:59. We hope to continue to see pledges coming in and to raise the maximum we can.
What this means:
The rewards were structured so that pledgers were not only pledging their financial support today, but will receive discounts for the year to come and we hope that this will encourage a surge in sales for the bookshop.
In the grander scheme of things this is the first time the community has put their money where their mouths are. After pledging to support the bookshop, through Lucky Ant, the community has proven that it will not stand idly and watch neighborhood institutions fail. This is a victory for bookshops, but also for small business everywhere.
11 comments:
The easy part is done, now the work starts. Good luck St. Mark's Bookshop!
Delaying the inevitable. Print is dead. It's actually beyond dead. It's forgotten.
Anon 4:47, do you work in publishing? Or are you just talking out of your ass? Do you care to back up your declaration with some facts, or are you gonna make me type this print v. ebook crap out yet again?
Great news! I just looked and they're close to 25 grand!
love you LvV
*blushes*
Thank you, Jeremiah!!
As I've said, I don't hate eBooks. But I also don't proselytize unless I actually know what the f*ck I'm talking about.
bring it, eReader zombies
LvV, perhaps you're familiar with Borders, the former print book retail giant, now bankrupt. Perhaps you understand that 20% of book sales at the Big Six are now digital, and are seeing triple digit growth in their e-book sector. Perhaps you are also familiar with the FACT that Amazon sells more e-books than print CURRENTLY.
You sound like a guy who still has a Laser Disc player.
First of all, I'm a woman.
Yes, 15-20% of book sales are digital (I said as much the last time this was brought up). That means a full EIGHTY are still print. eBooks are clearly popular and here to stay, but sales have also mostly plateaued for now.
I've never said that eBooks aren't popular or don't have their place. I'm just sick of this "print is dead" nonsense because print is clearly NOT dead. And again, the types of books/chapbooks/magazines sold at SMB are not often even offered in eBook format. They also specialize in art books and other types of aesthetically pleasing works, and eBooks, frankly, are ugly. Fonts, layouts, even preferable word breaks are all lost on the Kindle/Nook (iPad's a different story but most people aren't on iPads). This is fine if you're reading mass-market fiction, but poetry? Not so much.
I've also never denied that bookstores are facing tough times, but that's mainly a retail issue, not a print vs. digital one. People are buying the majority of books -- print OR e -- online these days, and rents have skyrocketed.
Finally, if you'd like to engage me further, that's fine, but please dial back the condescension. I'm not new at this game.
I am massively happy about community participation dedicated to the bolstering the real strength of the community. spread the word, vote with your dollars, blog like crazy, raise awareness, attend community meetings, talk to the media, organize.
this is what we absolutely have to do in bloomberg's nyc 2012.
hey anon a-hole,
you obviously could give a cr@p about community. this is about more than online e-sales you blithering, twittering *&%$!.
PS when I say "plateaued" I admit it is more complicated than that, but it's also more complicated than simply "triple-digit growth." Both are only true for certain segments.
The Amazon is issue is also complicated because Amazon is selling a lot of self-published stuff which I don't really consider when I talk about books as we traditionally understand them. There's also the backlist sales issue which is skewing the numbers.
The print book is not dead. Even if the world goes nuts for digital -- and that is a long way off, you don't kill a format that has existed for 700 years overnight -- the book as we know it will always exist. Did movies kill theater? There will always be a need/demand/desire for print books in certain segments.
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