Why is it that some merchants on Broad Street in Nevada City are selling books in competition with all the local booksellers, especially with their immediate neighbor, Harmony Books?

Here’s an even more disturbing question:

Why is such a large volume of books being shipped from Amazon to local businesses and residents? The volume probably exceeds that of the bookstores’ own orders!

Wake Up!

One day in 2005, citizens of Bay Area Peninsula cities were suddenly shocked to discover that Kepler’s Books, a fixture on the peninsula since the 1950s, had shut its doors without warning. Only then did a hue and cry go up, and some local financial angels stepped forward to rescue the bookstore.

“I’ve been so humbled — to have a community say ‘we love what you do and we want to help you,’ ” said Clark Kepler, owner of Kepler’s Books and Magazines in Menlo Park, Calif. In 2005, his store, near the Stanford University campus, was one of the first to attract investors after struggling financially. Since then, Mr. Kepler has heard from at least a dozen other stores that were trying similar ways to stay alive. He has told them what his own investors were told: “This is an investment from the heart. Don’t do this if you expect to see this money again.”

From “Who’s Buying the Bookstore?“

Wake up! Don’t let that happen here.

Buy your books locally (from a bookstore!).

Order your books locally (from a bookstore!).

Keep the money in our community.

Keep the local bookstores alive.