I knew within 10 minutes of their pitch that East Bay Booksellers would be a lead sponsor of the Oakland Review of Books. I told them I’d be disappointed if we weren’t. This hasn’t stopped them from asking me several times, “Are you sure?”
It’s probably not “worth it,” in any way that will make sense to our bookkeeper. Our bookselling arithmetic rarely does. Is this a gamble? An investment? A gift? Whatever it is, to me, it just makes sense.
Hopefully this speaks more to a critical idealism than outright naivety. We learned a lot about ourselves when we lost our longtime store location in the fire a year and a half ago. We came to understand how deeply, and why, people can value a bookstore. For some, it represented memories of their past. For others, it was a more immediate loss to their physical and cultural landscape. For everyone, there was (and to some extent is still) a fear that the loss would be permanent.
The lesson here isn’t that we learned we are special. The East Bay is nearly unmatched for its fantastic array of bookstores, large to small, general to niche. The loss of many of them would cause similar trauma and outpouring of support. No, the point is we at East Bay Booksellers came more fully to appreciate that our value comes from what endures beyond the day-to-day accumulation of years and familiarity.
Our reopening in a different location has not been easy. Let me amend that. The opening was easy, but the day-to-day has been more challenging than I was expecting. For the past year, we’ve operated halfway between being the old store and a new one. We have a leg up on truly new stores, but relocating has hurt sales. We’re working on that, of course, and we “trust the process” that informs how we go about running a store. Partnering with the Oakland Review of Books is a very EBB-style nod to that process.
One of our core values as a store is that prioritizing the social and creative exchange of ideas, curiosities, and experiences over the most immediate commercial considerations will still—somehow—get us what we need to be sustainable as a business and as a good place to work. At our best, we internalize and reflect this commitment. My hope is that partnering with ORB will amplify this ideal beyond the walls and shelves of the store, beyond even the books.
On a less philosophical level, sponsoring ORB’s launch helps them to pay their writers equitably. Or perhaps that’s more philosophical? But, simply put, we think people should be paid for the work they do and those who pay need to be able to do so. It’s both as simple and as difficult as that. ORB’s goal is to be primarily reader-supported. By sponsoring them, we hope writers will be empowered to create the pieces that will make this possible.
Frankly, it’s also good old-fashioned marketing. (This is what we told our bookkeeper when she saw the first check to ORB in our ledger.) Someone in advertising once told me that they always try to be paid in advance, because nobody truly believes it works. And we have no clue how many more customers we’ll get from doing this. But there is sometimes value, simply, in potential. Socially, culturally, and politically, Oakland has and will continue to punch beyond its size. This in and of itself bears to be documented—why, how, and for whom this is the case. Oakland’s stories extend beyond their telling, their power beyond their place. By being both an example and accounting of what distinguishes Oakland, ORB’s potential is as vast as this town of ours.
To close, we’re doing this because we’ve been betting on Oakland from our very beginning, and we aren’t looking to stop doing so anytime soon.
Brad Johnson is the proprietor of East Bay Booksellers. Click here to subscribe and donate to ORB.