Supporting Indie Bookstores
I've worked at the little witchy shop for nearly a year now, and I do much of the ordering, so I thought I'd share some of my background knowledge about how independent bookstores work, and why you should support them by ordering books through them instead of online:
First, try not to be annoyed when you can't find the book you're looking for in-store. No one has room to carry everything, and even if you think it's the most important book ever and can't imagine why we wouldn't have it, try to sympathetic to the myriad of reasons why it might not be on our shelves (for example, we've had it in the past but it never sells, it's out of print, it's too expensive to carry regularly, it doesn't fit with the store's theme, it's temporarily out of stock, it's offensive or we disagree that it's all that great, no one else has ever heard of it, it's outdated, it's still in hardcover and no one wants to pay for hardcover, it's too bulky to display).
The big reason to order from your indie shop is that you don't have to pay for the shipping. The shop pays it for you. And the other big reason is that despite popular ideas, it's often faster to order books through your local indie shop than through Amazon.
Amazon does offer deals on shipping for certain books and over certain amounts, and can have fairly speedy shipping (a few days), but the items this applies to are items you're probably not going to be buying online. They're books that are so common you can get them at any shop at any time. The books you're most likely to order online are books that you can't readily get in a store, books that Amazon doesn't include in its free and fast shipping deals. Every time I've ordered from Amazon, I've waited minimum six weeks for my order, and I've always paid heavy shipping (and often customs) fees.
When you order a book through your indie bookstore, this is what happens:
I look up the book in our system, which will tell us if it's available (sometimes they're out of print), and what distributors have it. We order from Canadian distributors whenever possible, so you're supporting Canadian economy. I put the order into our system with the appropriate distributor. The order doesn't go out right away; it goes out when we do our next (bulk) order from that distributor. If we've just gotten an order of stock from them, then it won't go out for a while. If it's been a while since we've restocked from that distributor, the order will go out quickly. If we're not planning to restock from that distributor for a while, or we have a bunch of special orders for them, we'll send out the special orders from customers, so that they don't have to wait too long.
It does make it impossible for me to give a specific timeline for when your order will arrive, but about 75% of the time, it's within three weeks, which beats Amazon by a mile. It almost never takes six weeks, and if it does, it's because the book has been back-ordered, which is not something anyone can do anything about, and we generally call our customers and let them know when that's happened.
Though we go local as much as possible, there are items we carry that come exclusively from the States, like our P line of flower essences. They're a great example of why you should get them through the shop rather than ordering from P directly online: Canadian customs frequently slams them with heavy fees. We can absorb that cost more easily than you can, as well as the shipping costs for heavy bottles. The P company is also extremely obnoxious to deal with, so yay that we're doing it for you.
To recap: ordering through your local indie store means: supporting local and Canadian industry, cheaper for you because you're not paying shipping or customs, and usually faster to receive. You're also being nicer to the environment by reducing shipping materials (our orders come in bulk and waste less than smaller orders). At the witchy shop in particular, you're also engaging with a community oriented around spirituality, alternative wellness, and creativity that is not a clog in a corrupt capitalist machine. And we're nice.
First, try not to be annoyed when you can't find the book you're looking for in-store. No one has room to carry everything, and even if you think it's the most important book ever and can't imagine why we wouldn't have it, try to sympathetic to the myriad of reasons why it might not be on our shelves (for example, we've had it in the past but it never sells, it's out of print, it's too expensive to carry regularly, it doesn't fit with the store's theme, it's temporarily out of stock, it's offensive or we disagree that it's all that great, no one else has ever heard of it, it's outdated, it's still in hardcover and no one wants to pay for hardcover, it's too bulky to display).
The big reason to order from your indie shop is that you don't have to pay for the shipping. The shop pays it for you. And the other big reason is that despite popular ideas, it's often faster to order books through your local indie shop than through Amazon.
Amazon does offer deals on shipping for certain books and over certain amounts, and can have fairly speedy shipping (a few days), but the items this applies to are items you're probably not going to be buying online. They're books that are so common you can get them at any shop at any time. The books you're most likely to order online are books that you can't readily get in a store, books that Amazon doesn't include in its free and fast shipping deals. Every time I've ordered from Amazon, I've waited minimum six weeks for my order, and I've always paid heavy shipping (and often customs) fees.
When you order a book through your indie bookstore, this is what happens:
I look up the book in our system, which will tell us if it's available (sometimes they're out of print), and what distributors have it. We order from Canadian distributors whenever possible, so you're supporting Canadian economy. I put the order into our system with the appropriate distributor. The order doesn't go out right away; it goes out when we do our next (bulk) order from that distributor. If we've just gotten an order of stock from them, then it won't go out for a while. If it's been a while since we've restocked from that distributor, the order will go out quickly. If we're not planning to restock from that distributor for a while, or we have a bunch of special orders for them, we'll send out the special orders from customers, so that they don't have to wait too long.
It does make it impossible for me to give a specific timeline for when your order will arrive, but about 75% of the time, it's within three weeks, which beats Amazon by a mile. It almost never takes six weeks, and if it does, it's because the book has been back-ordered, which is not something anyone can do anything about, and we generally call our customers and let them know when that's happened.
Though we go local as much as possible, there are items we carry that come exclusively from the States, like our P line of flower essences. They're a great example of why you should get them through the shop rather than ordering from P directly online: Canadian customs frequently slams them with heavy fees. We can absorb that cost more easily than you can, as well as the shipping costs for heavy bottles. The P company is also extremely obnoxious to deal with, so yay that we're doing it for you.
To recap: ordering through your local indie store means: supporting local and Canadian industry, cheaper for you because you're not paying shipping or customs, and usually faster to receive. You're also being nicer to the environment by reducing shipping materials (our orders come in bulk and waste less than smaller orders). At the witchy shop in particular, you're also engaging with a community oriented around spirituality, alternative wellness, and creativity that is not a clog in a corrupt capitalist machine. And we're nice.