On Consumerism: Ordering books in downtown Claremont

By Arthur Vidro
A good book store doesn’t merely sell you the books on its shelves. It will go out of its way to order the books you want.

We are lucky to have two such shops in the heart of Claremont.

Already this young year, each has sold me books they first had to order.

It is a simple process, it helps our local stores where the owners work there in person, and it keeps our money in the community instead of being sent to colossal-sized competitors in other time zones.

There are other reasons to patronize our local bookshops. Perhaps we ourselves could order the books online, but we wouldn’t necessarily get free shipping. And some of us – myself included – don’t like to give every Tom, Dick, and Harry website our name, address, and credit-card number.

At Violet’s Book Exchange (28 Opera House Square), proprietress Laurel Eaton can order any book carried by the major book distributor Ingram. This pretty much includes every book in print offered by the major publishers. Some of the smaller publishers are represented too.

You explain to Laurel the book you’d like and she’ll check its availability from Ingram, which does not charge the bookshop for shipping. So you pay the listed price for the book but nothing more. The profit for the bookshop comes from the 40% discount it receives from the distributor.

In my book, that makes everyone happy.

What about books not carried by Ingram? Well, Laurel will hunt for those too, though sometimes only used copies can be found. Violet’s doesn’t receive any discount (or even free shipping) for books that arrive from sources other than Ingram, so to make a small profit she charges the customer the price of the book, plus the shipping fee, plus $4 for the store.

A few doors downhill (42 Opera House Square) is Triple Play, where comics, cards, and games are sold. In the rear of the store are shelves of thick books – trade paperback and hardcover compilations of comic-book stories from the past.

I was delighted when co-owner Jeremy White ordered a massive book for me earlier this month. The major distributor for the comics industry is Diamond. The process for Triple Play parallels the process for Violet’s. Diamond ships for free what Triple Play orders, the customer pays the listed price, and the discount extended to the bookstore by the distributor becomes the shop’s profit.

But these are tough times for small businesses. People are sheltering at home, in some states by government edict, here in New Hampshire by personal choice.

I visited both shops last Saturday afternoon – often the busiest time of the week – to see how they were faring.

Violet’s had only one customer other than me. “It’s incredibly slow,” admitted Laurel the proprietress. To keep things sanitary, the store has instituted a policy whereby used books that get donated (in exchange for store credit) now get “quarantined” for three days before being processed and shelved.

The store is keeping to its regular days and hours, for now. But if foot traffic doesn’t pick up, she might close the store for a week or more. Even if she does close, the store will still gladly order and sell books via telephone (542-4222) and email ([email protected]).

Triple Play didn’t have any customers when I popped in. For the first time, even the adolescents who usually play games there every Saturday hadn’t shown up.

Perhaps most startling, the glass-doored refrigerator containing soda and other nonalcoholic drinks for sale to its customers quietly hummed. Perhaps it always hums, but this was the first time I noticed it. Otherwise the store was silent.

Ian Littlefield, an employee, was tending the store. “Today we’ve had three people in,” he said. “Usually we have about 20 [customers] in by this time. So far we haven’t had our hours affected, but we haven’t really had many people come in.”

Triple Play will order what it doesn’t stock. Interested customers can call (287-8910) or send an e-mail ([email protected]).

Of course, if New Hampshire follows what some other states are doing, and orders all nonessential businesses closed, both book stores would have to be shuttered.

Even so, they could still order books for you.

Ifyou have consumerism questions, send them to Arthur Vidro in the care of this newspaper, which publishes his column every weekend.