ACTION NEEDED: Save An AMAZING Local Bookstore

For those of you in the Chicago area, you may or may not know about Women and Children First. It's one of the world's largest feminist bookstores, and it's located right here in Chicago, in the heart of Andersonville. This book store is absolutely amazing: the owners and staff are incredibly helpful and always willing to give suggestions. They host a number of different monthly book clubs, including an Inter-generational Feminist Book Club, A Teen Feminist Book Club, and a Religious Feminist Book Club. They host readings from well-known authors, both local and national, and Eve Ensler, my absolute idol and the founder of the V-Day movement and the Vagina Monologues, has spoken there multiple times. They are true supporters of Chicago non-profits. Every month, they sponsor a different non-profit that affects women's lives and not only set up a display of information about that organization, but they also donate 10% of their profits from that month to them.

But, as many of you may or may not know, local bookstores are in a total crisis right now. Due to super bookstore conglomerates like Barnes and Noble, Borders and Amazon.com, people have forgotten about their local bookstores, which were there, providing books loooooong before Barnes and Noble or Borders ever set up shop (Hey, wasn't there a movie about this?)

Here's an excerpt from an article in the amazing Windy City Times:

“People don’t know perhaps the breadth of our stock. They may well find things that they don’t expect to,” said co-owner Ann Christophersen. “Our identity has shifted a bit since moving to Andersonville. We still are a specialty—a feminist store. We carry a lot of books by and about women in a depth and breadth that you just won’t find at other general bookstores. But, since moving to this location, we’re functioning more as a neighborhood bookstore and Women & Children First doesn’t quite capture that fact. It just shows our focus, but not our entire store.”

Underscoring that statement is the fact that the store’s customer base is about 40 percent men. W&CF has a diverse stock of books, including some sports titles that, no doubt, would appeal to male consumers. W&CF also has a deep selection of contemporary politics and loads of fiction titles.“We certainly have a lot of male customers these days. Heck, there are times when there are only male [ customers ] in the store, and that wasn’t the case in the early days,” Christophersen said. “Our male customer-base has risen significantly over the years because we carry a very diverse selection of books.”

The staff at W&CF includes two full-timers, including Bubon, as well as six part-timers. The staff is knowledgeable, helpful and friendly. One thing that has affected independent bookstores over the past few years is a decline in sales—and W&CF is no exception. “At the end of the 1990s, we were at a good place [ financially ] ,” Bubon said. “We maintained [ that level ] for the first few years [ of the 2000s ] , but the last three years have been a downward trend in sales.” One factor hurting sales at W&CF is competition, of course. Borders Books & Music, for instance, has four locations—all within four miles of W&CF. The Internet is also a significant factor because it’s made book-shopping simple and cheaper, especially for those who know exactly what they want. “It’s extremely hard to compete with [ the Internet ] ,” Bubon said.

W&CF was one of the first Chicago-area bookstores to sell online, and it still does.“We’re working as smartly and operating as smartly as, frankly, we know how to,” Christophersen said. “We have done everything we can think of to cut our operating costs, including my salary.” Things have gotten so bad at W&CF that both confirm the store must now plan month-to-month, not long-term. And the possibility that W&CF might close before the end of the summer is very real, they confirmed. “What it ultimately comes down to is: whether people in the community, and the city as a whole, decide it matters enough that we exist and then make their shopping decisions based on that,” Christophersen said. “We want people’s support, and we need it now. By that we mean, that they buy their books here. “What we offer that none of the Internet sites offer is: an actual place where people can look at books they may be interested in, see other people, and hear book suggestions.”


Here are some helpful tips from one of the owners on how to save this store:

1. Choose to shop at our store. Besides great books, we also carry a hand-picked selection of new release independent music by women, jewelry, buttons and bumper stickers, all the cool magazines, and a children's section we are famous for.

2. Talk us up to your friends, or, better yet, bring them in.

3. When you attend free programs at our store, please buy a book! This not only supports our programming endeavors, it also supports the writer and tells the publisher that it is worthwhile to send their authors to us.

4. Sign up on our website for our free e-newsletter to keep up to date with what's happening at the store: www.womenandchildrenfirst.com

5. Be our MySpace friend and subscribe to our MySpace blog for same reason as above.

6. Become a bookstore member. Annual membership costs $25 and gets you 10% off of all your book purchases, plus inclusion in the annual member's-only sale and a free subscription to More Books For Women(a $35 value!), a monthly round-up of recommendations from feminist bookstores around the country. Keep up with the latest new releases!

7. Show your love: put us in your top "My Space" friends.

8. If you are in a position to do corporate gift giving, consider our "Books by the Box" program. We offer direct to business delivery and substantial discounts on 20 or more copies of a single book.

9. Support the Women's Voices Fund, our not-for-profit programming arm, which helps sustain our active free programming schedule. Donations of over $50 are tax deductible when made out the the Crossroads Foundation (they manage the Women's Voices Fund). This also helps insure the future and diversity of feminist programming in Chicago!

10. We can offer bulk discounts to libraries, social service organizations, schools, and more. If you have a bulk book order to place, come to us first.

11. Tell us what we need to do to be your dream bookstore. If there is anyway that we can serve you better, let us know. Your opinion matters to us. Our ability to meet your needs is essential right now to our survival. Help us make that happen!

12. For birthdays and holidays tell your friends and family that you want a Women & Children First Gift Card!

13. Repost this with your own testimonies, and share this info with your friends, colleagues, classmates, and strangers on the street.

My life in Chicago would be drastically different if it weren't for Women and Children First. This is just as much a local business and sustainability issue as it is a feminist issue. Please, try and help a struggling star stay burning bright admist the vast array of shiny, cold corporate supernovas.