Just days removed from one of the busiest weekends of the year for indie bookstores, we are now deeply immersed in the "gifting" season, which is, as it turns out, a perfect time to talk about climate change and booksellers.
In 2018, under the retail cloud cover of Black Friday shopping distractions, the federal government quietly released the National Climate Assessment, described at the time by the Atlantic magazine as "a massive and dire new report on climate change."
Not everyone kept shopping. Melville House co-publisher Dennis Johnson recently tipped me off to a smart and timely bookseller initiative that has helped get the report into many people's hands.
Daniel Hirsch and Greg Harris, co-owners of Southampton Books and Sag Harbor Books on Long Island, N.Y., have given away hundreds of copies of The Climate Report, which was compiled by the U.S. Global Change Research Program and published earlier this year by Melville House.
Noting that the publisher's original goal was "to encourage authorless events built around the book," Johnson told me "the fact remains that these booksellers paid for the books and gave them away for nothing--just because of their sense of civic duty. We've been pretty inspired by them and have tried to develop ways to work with more stores that may be similarly inspired."
Harris recalled that the "genesis was pretty simple. It was a combination of Daniel being very moved by Greta Thunberg's speech in 2018 at the UN Climate Change Conference at the same time I was reading The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells. Independently of each other we were both trying to do something to raise awareness of the need to address climate change. We never try to make political statements with our bookstores. That's a good way to alienate half of your customers. But climate change should not be a political issue even though sadly it is in the U.S."
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| Daniel Hirsch | |
Although the bookstores began selling The Climate Report, they soon posted a sign offering free copies. "We weren't preaching or anything," Harris said. "Just giving people the science, the facts, so they could make their own decision. We ran out pretty fast of what we had. We contacted PRH about possibly getting a larger discount through their B2B program, but since we weren't actually selling the copies to a group or organization it wasn't doable. We then reached out to Melville House directly to see if they would offer us a higher-than-retail discount since we were absorbing the cost of the books. After I had an encouraging phone call with Tim McCall, he put the wheels in motion about working out a deal for us."
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| Greg Harris | |
McCall, v-p, sales and business development at Melville House, said he "became aware that they were giving away The Climate Report in the spring of this year. They reached out because they were purchasing significant quantities and giving them away--not selling them--to their customers. When I spoke with them, they were so genuine (like so many indie booksellers), just wanting to 'do what they can' for the climate crisis. They were hoping for some better-than-standard terms for future orders, and we were able to oblige."
He added that the publisher had by then developed the Melville House Climate Project, which matches local climate experts and activists with retailers and librarians to facilitate events.
"But with Daniel and Greg's query, we added a 'gifting' component to the project, whereby retailers who purchased three cartons of The Climate Report received a fourth carton free," McCall said. "The terms are intended for retailers who are gifting copies, and for retailers with nonprofit arms who can avail themselves of such terms more readily. It's also hoped that the terms will encourage in-store climate-focused events.
"Of course, gifting is expensive, and not something most stores can manage. But that's okay. It's been helpful to Daniel and Greg and will be there for any other independent retailers who may reach out. And in some small way, it may be shedding light on the ways our community is working at the local level to encourage climate activism and promote sensible environmental policy."
Harris observed that in the beginning, people were surprised by the offer of a free book, but "once we convinced them there were no strings--and yes, it's just free--the word spread and we've had a very positive response from customers at both of our stores. To date we've given out more than 700 copies in about seven months. We have an entire bookcase in our overstocks dedicated to the hundreds of copies that we have on hand at any given time. We've had kids from about 10 years old get copies all the way through folks in their 80s. Some book clubs are reading it and there is a robust discussion happening both locally and nationally.
"Basically the main point was that Daniel and I wanted to be able to look back in 30 or 40 years and say that we did something when all the bells and warnings were going off about the current state of the climate and the projections for the near future. Our bookstores are our platform and we used what was available to us. Like I said, we're not trying to be preachy. This is something that's important and we're hopefully making it easier for people to get the facts. It's pretty simple. It's nice to know that our customers are equally excited about free copies of The Climate Report as they are to get signed copies of Julie Andrews's new book."