Even as a number of federal courts order the Trump administration to reverse the slashing of the federal employee workforce spearheaded by tech billionaire Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, the impact of the wide-ranging cuts is being felt nationwide. That is especially true in the Washington, D.C., metro area, where approximately 450,000 federal employees—almost 6% of the region’s entire workforce—live, work, and shop. But federal employees aren’t the only ones adversely affected by the cuts, noted Nick Salis, COO of Kramers, the DuPont Circle bookstore and café previously known as Kramerbooks & Afterwords.
For weeks, government agencies have been canceling projects for which they’d hired contractors, and “there’s a ripple effect going through companies,” Salis said. “People are nervous.” That nervousness has become palpable at the independent bookstores where many of these former federal employees and contractors shop, affecting their programming and, in some cases, their businesses.
Salis reported that customer traffic and sales have declined at Kramers since the beginning of this year: “The traffic hasn’t been there,” he said. Bookstore general manager Andrew Jones noted “significant anxiety” among customers, with “a significant uptick” of conversations with staff about politics and current events. (To wit, Salis added, the store’s current bestseller is On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder.)
“They come to the bookstore and they see allies,” Jones said, “so they feel confident in speaking about their situation and that’s happened a lot more in the last three or four weeks. There’s almost empathy in both directions: our empathy for their anxiety about what’s going on and their empathy for how it’s affecting the bookstore—and it is affecting our bookstore. But we’re here, we’re doing what we can.”
While Salis acknowledged that “it’s still kind of early” and that “some people think they can get their jobs back,” he said that Kramers has been considering how best to respond to the situation, including how to support its employees—some of whom had applied for government jobs or were hoping to launch careers in government and thus have been affected by the layoffs and job freezes. Salis said that Kramers is making some employees full-time and extending the hours for others. “We’re starting with our own first,” Salis said, “and then we can move out towards the broader community.”
Laurie Gilman, the owner of East City Bookshop, said that her store is “having a good 2025 so far” but that she does not expect it to last. “Even though we’re fine now, I’m trying to plan for a 10% to 20% drop in revenue in the coming months and years,” she said, adding that “D.C. will be devastated by the cuts” from DOGE—as well as by the $1 billion in cuts coming to the District of Columbia’s current budget now that President Donald Trump has signed the recently passed GOP spending bill into law.
And yet, Gilman added, East City has become “a place of refuge” since the November election. “We’ve always had strong community support,” she said, “but more people than usual stay and chat, tell us how glad they are that we’re in the community, spend time browsing, or sit down to read.”
Bradley Graham, the owner of Politics and Prose, calls it “premature” to assess the impact of government layoffs. “P&P at least hasn’t felt any dip so far,” he wrote in an email to PW—but, he added, “we have seen, anecdotally, customers actually buying more books, remarking that they’re out of work and so have more time to read.” And, as Kramers’s Jones noted above, at P&P, “there’s also been a noticeable uptick in conversations among shoppers about the general plight of federal workers and the precarity of government employment these days.”
Sufferin’ suburbs
In Maryland, Amy Joyce, who opened Wonderland Books in Bethesda with Gayle Weiswasser four months ago, said that she has seen no decline in sales. But “we see and hear the stress and anxiety of many of our customers,” she added. “We are fielding a lot of requests for escapist reads from people trying to find distraction and calm” and “doing all we can to provide a comforting space.”
To that end, Wonderland has set up a table display of “cozy reads” and is spotlighting books on autocracy, tyranny, and how to resist authoritarian regimes. As it is at Kramers, On Tyranny is the bookstore’s top-seller, with Joyce noting that the store cannot keep it in stock. Sales of classic dystopian novels, she added, have also spiked recently.
Inspired by a customer buying books for a stranger who mentioned she’d been fired from her job at USAID, the staff at One More Page Books in Arlington, Va., set up a shelf filled with books free for the taking for federal workers “current, former, or in limbo,” said manager Lelia Nebeker. The shelf contains advance reading copies and other publishers’ samples, as well as books donated by local authors who’d heard about the initiative. “We also had a jigsaw puzzle out on a table for a four days for anyone to work on,” Nebeker said. “So many customers are in that space. There’s so much uncertainty for them.”
Ally Kirkpatrick of Old Town Books in Alexandria, Va., said that she’s noticed more people attending her store’s events. “I get the sense now is a time when our customers are needing social support,” she explained. “Our book clubs and events have been selling out more rapidly than usual.”
One event, held on March 16 in partnership with the Mid-Atlantic Border Collie Rescue organization and billed as “bookstore puppy yoga” featuring cute rescue animals, sold out before Old Town’s staff could even promote it. “Folks snapped those right up at $40 a ticket, all supporting the rescue organization,” Kirkpatrick said. “I think because, one, puppies are adorable, but two, it’s really tough out in the world right now. Everyone needs books and friends and puppies.”
This story has been edited for clarity
