Bookstores in SF have been closing for a while; blaming this closure on the minimum wage hike is specious, to say the least. Yeah, I read the blog; but closing the bookstore today, because wages will go up in 2018 (3 years from today), is ridiculous.

Let me offer an alternate explanation, based on speculation (but grounded in the realities of the booming SF realestate market): someone offered to buy out Borderlands lease for a ridiculous amount, and it was an offer they just couldn't refuse. So basically it was a choice between (a) struggling along paycheck-to-paycheck for the next 3 years, or (b) getting a nice fat check to close the doors and do something else. They chose (b). The Valencia corridor between 16th and 24th has exploded, with a large number of hipster restaurants and boutiques, and money is flowing in like crazy. Might as well tap into that while the going's good.

Expect to see some hipster cafe, restaurant or boutique opening in their place in the next few months.

"Although the major effects of the increasing minimum wage won't be felt for a while, we've chosen to close now instead of waiting for two reasons. First, the minimum wage has already increased from $10.74 per hour to $11.05 (as of January 1st) and it will increase again on May 1st to $12.25. Continuing to pay the higher wage without any corresponding increase in income will expend the store's cash assets. In essence, the store will have less money (or inventory) six months from now, so closing sooner rather than later makes better business sense. But more importantly, keeping up our morale and continuing to serve our customers while knowing that we are going to close has been very painful for all of us over the past three months. Continuing to do so for even longer would be horrible. Far better to close at a time of our choosing, keep everyone's sorrow to a minimum, and then get on with our lives."

Source: the article.

Note: The raise to $11.05 is a 2.9% increase, and from $10.74 to $12.25 is a 14.1% increase. The 3% won't kill them right away, but the 14% would hurt quite a bit more.

I note that the author of the blog post says:

"The change in minimum wage will mean our payroll will increase roughly 39%. That increase will in turn bring up our total operating expenses by 18%. To make up for that expense, we would need to increase our sales by a minimum of 20%. We do not believe that is a realistic possibility for a bookstore in San Francisco at this time."

They weren't paying their people much, were they?

No, they weren't paying their very limited staff much; it's a marginal business that's been on the decline for years, and even one of the managers is stated as having a salary of only $28k. All of this is in the article.

>managers is stated as having a salary of only $28k.

Which isn't a livable wage in SF, right? At some point businesses that can't survive cost inflation, either due to worker costs, government regulation, or energy cost must give up their space for those that can.

The manager didn't even make any money from the bookstore, it was the cafe that paid for the salary.

Not even the owner(s?) - I suspect that everyone involved including the owner could make significantly more by working even a low- to mid-range clerical job anywhere else in San Francisco.

It doesn't look like you paid much attention when reading, min. wage goes up immediately, not in 2018. 2018 was mentioned in different context altogether - that if the plans of minimum wage in 2018 become true, it makes more sense for the owners to get minimum wage job than to own/manage a bookstore, both money-wise and effort-wise.

Looks like YOU did not read the blog post.

Minimum wage went up by $0.31 on January 1. That's a 3% increase; not the 39% the post is whining about.

It will go up to $12.25 on May 31.

And to $15 in 2018; which is a significant jump, I admit. But long overdue.

Not immediately but business can not operate with a time horizon on a couple of months. If they need substantial increase in income, they have either to find the source of such income or stop digging the hole. Delaying it until the actual bankruptcy would do no good to anyone. If it is clear it is impossible to operate viable business with the projected expense level, then it's better not to waste more time and money on it.

And using derogatory terms like "whining" towards people trying to run real business and explaining their real-life challenges in factual manner only betrays your utter unwillingness to consider the subject seriously. No wonder you're using a throwaway account.

Yeah, running a business like a bookstore is exhausting, and at some point you just hit one too many challenges and decide you're better off giving up and doing something else. I've literally walked in to client appointments and had the business owner break down crying during slow business periods.

And, the unfortunate reality is that if the community thought the bookstore was valuable, then they wouldn't be closing. Which makes me sad, I love bookstores.

I should probably go visit one of my local ones today.

I've often wished that I could visit a bookstore to buy e-books, with a commission going to the store. The entire transaction could take place via mobile, but physical books would be available in the store for browsing and discovery.

Alternately, put out a physical tip jar for showroomers.

I'd bet all those books are available less expensively on amazon. The only value being lost is the value of the curation by the owners.

It's also a function of demand elasticity whether cost increases are passed to consumers, eaten by businesses, or some combination. We'll see how much pricing power local businesses have.

And it's a real stretch to argue that a small business owner earning under $30k/year, with limited growth prospects, is an efficient deployment of capital. This was clearly a labor of love.

A trip to a bookstore, for a large section of the book-loving populace, is indeed something of value beyond just "curation" – the experience of browsing shelves, randomly finding or remembering something you wanted to read, seeing new releases on a table and judging the quality of the paper or the binding or appreciating the rag of the edges – none of this can be reproduced online. While you certainly don't have to appreciate them personally, many folks do.

borderlands empirically demonstrates that is not a very large populace, or perhaps that populace was enjoying serendipity at borderlands then buying from amazon

ps -- some of that serendipity is available online too; see eg the big ideas -- authors talking some aspect of their novels -- on John Scalzi's site. Of the fiction books I've read in the last 3 years, probably 80% of them have come from reading these posts. http://whatever.scalzi.com/category/big-idea/

from the OP: "2014 was the best year we've ever had". Serendipity yes can be found online - no recommendations I've seen have ever approached Amazon's (once I fed my data into them), especially a quickly-shuttered (too creepy?) and now not-remembered program that harvested recommendations via pairing you with folks who'd rated/owned/purchased similar things. That said, it was mostly the experience of physicality that I was referring to, although there is something distinct about browsing physical shelves, a hard-to-capture mix of weight, quality, and visual-imprint – spine design and relative length of titles being nearly invisible online; anecdotally one can see reports of authors captive to Amazon's self-publishing ecosystem writing shorter and shorter books in order to capitalize on per/title payments from their Prime lending program.

Ah, I see what you meant. There's still the Strand, but perhaps thats the kind of thing that can only exist in nyc.

While I buy math books in paper, for fiction I only buy ebooks. The backlight for reading in a shared bed without a lamp on is a killer feature for me and probably many others.

The Strand in NYC, Powell's in Portland, and a number of more local ones at a smaller scale. New/used bookstores definitely aren't dead, they just survive in areas with more bookish populations (the entire city of Portland would riot for days if Powell's ever threatened to close).

I like the "treat it as a cultural institution and charge admission" solution, if that's what it takes to avoid closing. A few dollars would totally be worth it for an hour-long leisurely browse.

Maybe bookstores could charge a pay-what-you-want admission fee, like museums.

> folks can't get cheap used books any more

Perhaps you meant locally? Bookfinder, amazon, alibris, et al still provide excellent service.

"But the number of bookstores goes down by one, and the volumes available are not available in the library. So the community has lost something too."

Maybe some sort of collection could be set up to have Bay Area public libraries buy out as much of their stock as possible?

That isn't it, there is a cap on the number of volumes the libraries will keep. And of course the folks who frequent used book stores don't always have access to the Internet or a credit card and a fixed address to order from Amazon.

"That isn't it, there is a cap on the number of volumes the libraries will keep"

I'm sure there is. Having said that, the Bay Area has at least a dozen public libraries, large and small. Add in public university and community college libraries, and that number could be as high as 20. It's not inconceivable that 20 libraries could absorb a single bookstore's inventory. The inter-library loan system works well enough that those books are effectively available to the entire Bay Area community.

That's not counting all the books they'll sell to private individuals in their going-out-of-business sale, and of course the libraries will pass up buying things they already have.

If you're going to buy something in the sale anyway, it might make sense to contribute that money to a common fund so libraries can buy those books and make them available to the community. Win-win.