Allow me to share a secret with you: for a while, I feared I wouldn’t be qualified to start this bookstore because I “only” have two bookshelves in my home, and they’re not completely full.
What may be considered even worse is that I am planning on giving away a large number of my books here in a few months to either the Little Free Library that will be opening on my college campus, or to the one I plan to open myself where I live. (TBD on that project.)
I worry that when I promote my business with videos taken inside my home, someone would see (just) the two bookshelves and think, “Does she even LIKE enough books to open a store?”
Do I have the visible readership needed to show that I know enough to open a bookstore? Do I prove my love of books enough for other people to buy books from me? Do people believe that I want to share my genuine love of books, not just the aesthetic of reading them?
In 2023, I read 30 books. Compared to the 100+ you often hear other readers talk about on their popular social media channels, I felt inadequate. (To prove my point: I went to YouTube and searched “books I read in 2023” and this was the first video that popped up. Take note of the thumbnail, to be discussed momentarily.)
Truth be told, I’m not sure when the “Bookstagram,” “BookTube” and “BookTok” eras started. I didn’t even start watching book-related content on YouTube with any consistency until maybe two years ago, and I know all three started long before that.
But what I can say is that these online communities have turned my love of reading into something that feels more like a popularity contest. And I’m determined to change it back. Starting my business is one of the many ways I am doing that.
I often share books I’m reading on my personal Instagram and YouTube accounts. To be completely honest, I usually feel like they do nothing to draw the interest of the large part of the book-ish community. The books I share are typically just ones I have interest in reading at the time. It's shocking, reading that sentence back and realizing it’s the issue, but alas.
But that’s the thing: from the book-ish-”cult” perspective (please note I say the word “cult” in quotation marks for a reason, as I don’t mean it literally. But it makes a point, no?) I’m not sharing the most popular videos and posts, like the latest fashion trends, so my content is not remotely worth looking at.
Videos like “book hauls” where someone shows the 20+ books they’ve bought this month (ONE month!!) or 24 hour reading challenges are the ones that are popping off lately. I don’t create content like that.
The content I make feels way more honest and realistic than that. I like talking about books that I stumble across at the library, ones that were published twenty years ago and change the way I think about something. Despite the honesty and reality of these pieces of content, it receives zero attention.
As much as I hate to say it, you can’t grow a business without attention. And therein lies the entire problem with starting a bookstore that is hellbent on not playing into this consumerism content. You may be setting yourself up for failure.
It’s interesting to watch this issue-turned-potential-failure play out in real time. The inventory I opened this bookstore with very intentionally feels far removed from the popular content of the book community. I intend to keep it that way.
It wasn’t my goal to open a bookstore that would perpetuate the idea that looking like a reader is more valuable than actually reading a variety of interesting, thought-compelling books. The books we sell aren’t showcased on the impossibly large bookshelves or stacks of books influencers stand in front of. (See the thumbnail referenced above.)
I think we can all agree that some books more often appear in these consumerism-based pieces of content than others. So when I choose to sell books that aren’t in that category, we’re removing ourselves from the popularity contest.
The popularity contest is looking like a reader instead of engaging in the reality of being a reader. Sure, you definitely look like a reader when you post videos of your impossibly large TBR lists, as an example. (They’re popular videos! TBR jar videos!) But are you actually reading any of the books on these lists? Or maybe worse, are you trying so hard to seem like a reader that you breeze through them too fast to even absorb the content of them?
Readership that only exists to get content in front of other people in the book-ish community require a lot of consumerism-based habits. It ultimately feels…flat to me. I think avid readers that are genuinely in the field for their own growth don’t really care about how it looks. They don’t need humongous stacks of books behind them, possibly filled with ones they may not even have a real interest in reading. They don’t need to collect books in numbers, but rather want to collect them in quality and love.
But at the end of the (current) day, those readers are simply not getting attention online. Maybe not unless they’re pissing people off.
I think challenging our own tendencies for consumerism in the book industry can only be good for ourselves. What we should aim for is to read books that will challenge us or change us or make us think or shift our perspective on something, rather than being a reader for the purpose of entertaining someone else.
I fell into this consumerism trap for a long time. I have an entire bookshelf of unread books because of this trap, some of the books written by authors I’ve never historically liked. I have books I thoroughly disliked but still have, simply because it adds to the shelves, and therefore the aesthetic.
But early this year, I decided to stop buying books unless I’ve already read and loved them. I am aiming to work through my shelves of unread books, and only read books I don’t yet own from the library or from loved ones. Not only does it save a ton of money, but it helps me ensure that I build a collection I feel truly passionate about. Even if that collection doesn’t look good online.
I don’t want to sell the popularity contest here at A Little Break because our mission is to help people with their mental health, and feeding into the social media craze of books and the vibes that come with it feels like the antithesis of that goal.
And truth be told, I fully recognize that gives me a very intense disadvantage as the owner of A Little Break.
But I’ve never been one to do something because it’s easy - I do something because I’m passionate about it. I’m passionate about mental health, and preventing suicide the way we do through this bookstore. I’m passionate about using my brain every single day and doing so through reading fascinating stories I’ve never heard before. I’m passionate about building a collection of things that I care about and love, not just one that looks pretty for the internet.
So I ask you: are you reading for social media, or are you reading for yourself?