Forty-one-year-old Charis Books and More in Atlanta has put its building up for sale. The feminist bookstore is the latest to run into money trouble after, earlier this year, New York City's Bluestockings turned to Indiegogo for financial help.
Charis and its nonprofit arm, Charis Circle, announced the impending sale via Facebook earlier this week. The store made it clear, though, that the move is limited to real estate. As Charis Circle executive director Elizabeth Anderson wrote: "It does not mean that Charis Books is for sale or that the store or the Circle are closing. (We’re NOT!).”
This isn’t the first time Charis, one of approximately a dozen remaining feminist bookstores in the U.S., has looked for a way to keep its business alive. In the 1990s Charis became one of the first independent bookstores to move to a hybrid model. It created a for-profit bookstore (owned by Sarah Look and Angela Gabriel), to run alongside a non-profit partner that could host and sponsor fundraising events.
“Any bookstore has to start thinking differently to ensure its future,” Gabriel told PW. “Change is hard, but it’s exciting. We’re really open to a lot of possibilities.”
Over the past nine months she and the Circle board have been exploring a number of those possibilities. They reached out to college and university administrators, arts organizations, city planners, and others before deciding that Charis should sell its building. Gabriel emphasized, as Anderson did on Facebook, that Charis wants to continue its mission as a public feminist space for the next generation.
Now that the sale has been announced, Charis and the Circle plan to hold a series of town hall meetings in the coming year to solicit community feedback. They have also set up an e-mail address, FeministFuture@chariscircle.org, so customer can write in with their concerns.
The time frame for the store’s transition is based on the sale of the building. For now, Gabriel said, the focus is on the holiday season, which has been busy. Like many booksellers, she reported brisk sales of coloring books.
