Here’s the latest email from Catherine Bohne, owner of the Community Bookstore. It is FULL of OPTIMISTIC NEWS. We’re glad to hear that because we can’t wait for this summer’s Harry Potter release party, which will surely be as great as all the others.

Hi Everyone! Greetings and salutations! I’m delighted that I can begin to counterbalance the various waves of gloom we accidentally unleashed about the store back in February (I think it was in February?). As many of you know (but in case you don’t), an email I’d written in a dark moment (and stupidly forgot to delete) was accidentally forwarded to . . . oh, 1,500 people. Some of the recipients then forwarded said email to yet more people, and . . . ugh.

    A word-of-mouth panic was started!

    The dark moment had to do with facing up to the fact that the store, despite how lovely it often is here, wasn’t on a path that was ultimately fully functional, and I’d sort of gotten to the end of my tether as far as feeling like I had the resources (either money-wise or emotionally) to deal with it. Those two things are facts. The store needed some help, and I was exhausted (it was February, which I’ve always maintained is the cruelest month). Well.  As my father once said (after listening to my sixth grade orchestra concert) – It’s an ill wind that blows no good. This is Park Slope, and we are amazing!

    The word went out that the store was in trouble, and before you can say anti-corporate- monopoly, the wagons were being circled. An amazing group of professional (and impressive!) people have stepped in, appointed themselves a pro-bono ad-hoc (ipso facto and hey presto) Advisory Board, and have been combing through the details of the store . . . and guess what?! There’s light at the end of the tunnel! We’ve just been suffering from classic small-business problems (under-capitalized! ) and are working to implement the more-than-several solutions we’ve come up with together. It’s actually really exciting! So stay tuned as we unroll new stuff.

In the meantime, you can help! Some of you have already been buying gift certificates – this is a great help, as it can be a way of directing new people to the store (just this evening, I overheard a woman saying to a friend “Can you believe, I’ve never been in here? And I live around the corner!”) and it feeds us much needed cash, which we can magically transform into books on the shelf! It’s also worth noting that blank gift certificates which are bought and then donated to a non-profit organization become magically tax-deductable!

You can also help by spreading the word about the things we do and services we offer that make us competitive – I’m afraid I’ve been kind of lousy about tooting our horn over the last few years, and let people forget (if they ever knew) lots of things about the store. Do people know about our Frequent Buyer’s Club (often referred to mysteriously as “that thing”), which is free to join, requires no dopey card that gets lost or left at home or in your other coat pocket, and offers $10 off every hundred dollars spent (making it, I suspect, a more generous discounting than the chains do generally – you actually don’t spend more, shopping here).  Remind them about how magical it is to go into a bookshop where the books are hand-picked (like so many fat, low-hanging grapes) with intelligence (!), a sense of adventure, humor and curiosity. How about the Mystery Book Swap which lets you cart home mysteries for a buck a piece (good for a lazy, cheap weekend!). Did you know that we can have titles drop-shipped from our distributor’s warehouse to anywhere in the country (just like they-who-must- not-be-named) ?  You can use us to send books all over the place, and we discount ‘em too!. (And shhhh . . . . in a couple of weeks we’ll be unveiling a new chunk of the website which allows even more sophisticated orders . . . but that’s a secret).

One of the most important, long-term ways you can help is by spreading the word about supporting local businesses. I think most of us choose to live here because in some way we love the human scale of the place – the beauty of the streets (and what a relief to be somewhere where it’s tacitly acknowledged that beauty matters, has meaning and is important), the friendliness (or when not friendly, charming eccentricity) of the neighborhood, and the freedom from the faceless monolithism (which is NOT a word, but you know what I mean) that seems be thriving almost everywhere else.  Well, yeah. Park Slope is lovely. It’s charming and it’s warm, and it’s livable. Quirky and full of character. Presumably, we’d like to keep it this way? You know where I’m going with this. It’s simple:  The places where you spend your money will survive and prosper, and their character will thrive and spread. I have every confidence that you are making those choices (heck, you’re reading this!). But gently remind people, if you hear them sighing or despairing . . . it’s easy enough to begin to take control of your environment. You just have to start. With choices.