If you've ever been into the Hawley-Cooke Bookstore on Bardstown Road, you've probably glanced at the wall to the left of the doors and noticed the many plaques on the wall proclaiming this bookstore as "The Best of Louisville." Year after year Louisvillians vote that Hawley-Cooke is the best bookstore in town. It beats out the much bigger Barnes & Noble on Hurstbourne Lane and the Walden Books (owned by Borders) and B. Daltons (owned by B&N) which make their homes in the malls around town. This assessment, in my opinion, is right on target. Hawley-Cooke is the perfect bookstore, because it is an independent bookstore which caters to local interests. Have you ever browsed through their selection of books of local interest? It's not just a shelf or a bookcase; it's an entire section. When I was in the store last week at least a half dozen people came in within fifteen minutes requesting the recently published book about local geology "Why are the Highlands High?" People know that if you want a book unique to this area you go to Hawley-Cooke. The community supports the store, so the store, in turn, supports the locals. You don't have to be Barbara Kingsolver or Robert Penn Warren to have your book sold and even highlighted at Hawley-Cooke. You can be the little guy with a little-known publisher who just happened to write a damn good book.
But guess what? You can vote Hawley-Cooke the best bookstore in Louisville over and over, but if you don't buy books there, they can't stay in business. You can't just go meander through the the store, muse over their fantastic collection of literature, and converse with the wonderfully friendly salespeople and then go home and order the book through Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble in order to save a buck or two. While Hawley-Cooke is a great place to simply hang out and read (and no one ever bothers you if that's all you go there to do), it's also a business. They have to turn a profit. That's the bottom line. Plaques on the wall don't pay the bills. People buying books do. Unfortunately while Hawley-Cooke has been supporting us, we haven't been supporting them. And now they are gone. The stores are still there, but they are now under the ownership of Borders. Although they say they intend to keep the stores much the same, it's just a matter of time until the tables on the sidewalk out front displaying an eclectic mixture of reduced-price books disappear and the massive section of local literature is whittled down to a single shelf so that the other shelves can be filled with dime-a-dozen romance novels and mysteries. One of the places that made Louisville a unique place to live is going to be replaced with a store that will make Louisville just another middle-size, middle-class city. In a letter to the public written by Hawley-Cooke, they expressed genuine sadness over their closing. They were apologizing to us, when really we should be the ones apologizing to them.
One day I hope I'm wealthy enough to own an independent bookstore. I'll stock it with wonderful books that I hand-select. I'll fill it with comfy chairs and friendly people. I'll invite local writers struggling to break into the market to give readings. I'll let people sit and read and browse for as long as they like, and I won't care if they buy a book or not. I'll remind people that this is the way bookstores used to be before corporate giants bought out the little man. I don't want to be wealthy so I can buy fancy cars or homes. I want to be wealthy so I can run a bookstore the way they were meant to be run, and when the end of the day comes and I've lost more money than I've made, I can look at the bottom line, laugh, and not give a damn.
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