Within its 46.9 square miles, San Francisco holds over 40 independent bookstores. Denser than nearly any other city with independent, brick-and-mortar bookstores, these bookstores’ persistence in a city known for its ever-growing tech hub is a testament to San Franciscans’ continued patronage for the arts and culture that the city is so known for.
When Independent Bookstore Day rolls around on the last Saturday of April, as it has for the last 12 years, San Franciscans turn out to support these staples of the city. Some of the most popular stores include Green Apple Books, City Lights, Dog Eared Books, Fabulosa Books, Adobe Books and Medicine for Nightmares, but those are just a few of the dozens.
For the occasion, many bookstores offer special deals. At Fabulosa Books, pride flags were handed out to customers who spent over $25. At Dog Eared Books, for every $100 spent, customers received a store-branded tote (while supplies last).
Customers, local and tourist alike, patronized the many stores including Green Apple Books’ Clement Street location, which was crowded on the morning of the holiday. Various customers, like Katrina Panovich and Clare Doornbos, commented on the unique energy of these San Francisco locations on this day.
“I believe so strongly in the importance of independent bookstores for communities, and for people’s personal growth, and how valuable it is to get different perspectives through reading,” Panovich said. “I also just really love buying books, and so any chance I have to not have to rate limit myself at a bookstore is a very good one.”
That notion of independent bookstores fostering community, growth and perspective is shared by the bookseller Doornbos, someone Panovich just met inside Green Apple Books on the morning of the holiday and instantly connected with.
“The San Francisco Bay Area is full of independent thinkers,” Doornbos said. “I don’t think that we need our thoughts curated for us by big companies like Barnes & Noble, who do a pay-to-play situation with whoever has the most money gets the most books on the shelves, or being told what to read by an algorithm. That’s not who the people of the Bay Area are.”
On Wednesday, just a few days before Independent Bookstore Day, Amazon, one of those big companies, announced its own sale on all books sitewide from April 23-28. That move was seen by many as a direct challenge or insult to the then-upcoming holiday. Eileen McCormick, the store manager at Green Apple Books, believes that the intimacy of independent bookstores is something you can’t find at faceless corporations like Amazon.
“The thing that Amazon will never be able to take from us is the ability to create community, and that’s something that I think is so important to bookstores and to neighborhoods, to San Francisco,” McCormick said. “It’s a place where you get to see what people in your neighborhood are reading and suggesting, and get to talk to people who really have a passion for literature and books. I think that it’s really important to celebrate that because a lot of that started to disappear during COVID, and I think that’s what makes life worth living.”
Becka R., who wished to be credited with no last name, citing the current political climate, is a co-founder of Books Not Bans, a nonprofit that sends queer and banned books to places with strict laws on literature. She understands the nature of competition and why independent bookstores provide something that the conglomerates can’t.
“There’s no way Books Not Bans would exist without the passion and commitment that independent bookstores have to a diverse range of thoughts and ideas that aren’t represented by major publishers,” Becka said.
Books Not Bans originated at Fabulosa Books. Alvin Orloff, the owner of Fabulosa, sees independent bookstores as vital to maintaining a curious readership.
“If people come here, they will realize that the literary universe is much larger than most of us imagine, there’s so much more available,” Orloff said. “There’s so many little nooks and crannies of obscurity that are delightful and enriching to discover, there’s genres of literature that people don’t normally encounter.”
Independent Bookstore Day is only one day of the year, but that doesn’t mean these dozens of stores are any less active the rest of the year. Through the popularity of “BookTok,” there has been a renewed interest in the third space of bookstores among younger generations. Many of the bookstores in San Francisco host Q&As with authors and other community-based events.
While many fret over the fraught nature of brick-and-mortar bookstores in a nation where 21% of adults are illiterate and 54% of adults have a literacy level below a 6th grade level as of 2024, there is still a strong contingent of people who will show up to support independent booksellers in person. San Franciscans make that clear on Independent Bookstore Day.
“The kind of associations between bookseller and regular customer, between customers who have just met now standing in the store like we two have, and between booksellers, those are really important networks,” Doornbos said. “They’re very important to the wider community.”
