Buy Local: Booksellers, Publishers, and Authors
Congratulations Portland for rallying behind this local bookstore!
Buy local is a mantra in Portland and supporting independent local businesses preserves the individuality of this great city.
St. Johns Booksellers is especially grateful to the community for listening to their pre-holiday plea: help us raise $6000 or we are out of business for good. Despite the minimal foot-traffic and dwindling national economy, local patrons listened to owner Nena Rawdah and rallied to keep this family-owned neighborhood bookstore located in the historic heart of North Portland’s St. Johns neighborhood, open for business.
During this financial struggle, St. Johns Booksellers created the Community Supported Bookstore (CSB) program to ensure a more stable future. This program benefits participants (free stuff, discounts, and exclusive events!), the bookseller/s (steady cash flow, means to expand), and the community at large.
Another family-owned bookstore we all know, Powell’s Books, encourages readers to look beyond the bestsellers. Check out the small press corner bookshelves, located in the blue room of Powell’s City of Books on Burnside. This section highlights small press publishers — many local.
Kevin Sampsell, who runs the small press section at Powell’s, is an author himself, with a new release A Common Pornography, which has gained local notoriety through Powell’s, Portland State University and beyond. I’m currently reading his memoir for a writing class in the PSU Master of Arts in Writing program.
Most Portlanders haven’t allowed themselves to become indoctrinated into the corporate model of buy cheap, disposable, inauthentic products. Instead, let’s keep following our instincts to support independent business owners, authors, and publishers.
