Independent bookstores make quiet comeback as big chains dominate retail
For years now, we have heard that Amazon and the big chains are crushing small businesses, but independent bookstores are suddenly making a comeback.About 422 new indie bookshops opened in 2025, according to the American Booksellers Association, a 31% rise from 2024.Countless independent restaurants, coffee shops, fitness centers, movie theaters, clothing stores and other small businesses also continue to thrive even in this era of ever-bigger retailers, fast-casual restaurants and massive e-commerce platforms.The reasons are obvious.For starters, we live in a big country.
There are 360 million Americans spread out across 4m sq miles of land.Big companies can’t cover all that ground, and even if they could, it’s irrelevant.There were too many different preferences, tastes, likes, dislikes and penchants that will drive consumers to any different type of retailer that they choose.There’s also no shortage of entrepreneurism and independence in this country.For the past few years, there have been between 400,000 and 500,000 new business applications filed every month! Millions of people want to own businesses and be their own boss, and these people will find their unique way to present their business products and services to their customers in order to earn a livelihood.
The more the economy consolidates, the more opportunity there is at the edges.It’s generally better and more enjoyable for people who work in small businesses, which is why, despite the compensation that larger organizations can offer, small businesses make up half of the country’s workforce.It always amazes me when I see clients who are clearly paying their employees less money than they could earn at a big company, retain those employees let alone attract new ones.Why? It’s because when you work at a small business, there is less bureaucracy and more flexibility and more of a chance to make a difference than when you work at a bigger company.The smartest owners of independent businesses realize this and leverage these advantages to recruit people that are committed, loyal and believe in what their leader is trying to do.
Independently owned businesses tend to have more of a connection with their communities, which, in turn, generates more loyalty and attention to their promotions, activities and special holidays commemorating their existence such as Small Business Saturday and National Small Business Week.As opposed to the chain store, they create an image of the Main Street merchant fighting the system.As a result, people like to show they care for their communities by supporting their small businesses, even if prices may be slightly higher.Consumers don’t just tolerate small businesses – increasingly, they choose them as a reaction against big corporations.And these businesses also give back in the form of sponsoring Little League teams, holding charity events and leading local chambers of commerce and rotary clubs.
Small businesses fill a void that big businesses don’t,Big companies scale efficiency,Small businesses scale relevance,The Barnes & Noble outlet near me has to meet their numbers each month and is focused entirely on moving product to make the most of every square inch of space,It’s not as profitable as a location to inventory slower-selling titles, even if there’s an audience for them.
Small businesses fill in that space.They sell more obscure books that only a small percentage of people will buy.Big companies optimize for scale.Small businesses win by ignoring it.Small business owners earn, on average, about $80,000 a year.
Their businesses – particularly if they’re a single location – tend to be less profitable than a chain store because they don’t have economies of scale.But these business owners, as long as their bills are being paid, often times prefer the flexibility and individuality of being their own boss and are willing to take home less pay for that freedom.As a result, independent businesses can be more flexible with pricing and less bureaucratic about their discounts and sales policies in order to keep their customers’ happy.Believe it or not, many suppliers and landlords also prefer to work with smaller companies.Big companies routinely take longer to pay, are difficult to penetrate for collection and retain a staff of salaried workers in their accounting departments that still get their paycheck every week regardless if a payment is late.
Having a small business customer or tenant means dealing with the owner directly if there are any problems, and working with someone who is often more reliable in buying products or occupying a space that’s too small for a bigger fish to consider,This isn’t to say that independent business owners aren’t at a significant disadvantage to their larger counterparts,Inflation, tariffs, regulations and taxes hit them harder,Competition is fierce,Ad agencies, PR firms, online platforms and social media sites give preference to larger clients with deeper pockets.
Standards, processes, procedures and systems are harder to formalize.Technology is more disruptive.Resources are lower.Stress levels are higher.Economic shifts are tougher to endure.
But independent businesses can be more niche and focus on a certain type of clientele,They can pivot quicker, add or delete product lines, start or end a service, or hire and fire a poorly performing worker faster,Decisions are made quicker,If they want to expand, they can,If they don’t, they don’t.
All of these reasons explain the success of the independent bookstore owner, the retailer, the restaurateur,Whenever you read of the big corporate giant eating up its smaller competitors, don’t get worried,There’s plenty of room for independent small business in this country, and there always will be,Big companies will keep getting bigger,But they’ll never be everything – and that’s exactly where small businesses win.
Winners and judges out of pocket as £20,000 writing awards appear to have closed
A competition for new writers that promised a £20,000 prize fund appears to have shut down, leaving winners and judges, including a Booker prize-winning novelist, out of pocket.Established in 2022, the Plaza Prizes last year offered 10 awards that were judged by the “finest poets and writers in the world”.However, some of the judges for the 2025 competition say they were not paid, and a number of winners say they had their entries withdrawn after being accused of using AI to create their work – allegations they strenuously denied.One judge, the 2021 Booker prize winner Damon Galgut, described the competition as a “scam” after he did not get paid for his work judging a fiction section of the annual competition.Anthony Joseph, who won the 2022 TS Eliot poetry prize, also says he was not paid for his work
Zelda taught me the importance of play – and has helped me deal with work, parenting and grief
I initially dismissed the Wind Waker’s cartoonish visuals as juvenile. But now I try to carry the game’s sense of joy into all aspects of my lifeI had a complicated relationship with video games when I was a teenager. I had straightforwardly, wholeheartedly loved the Nintendo games that I’d grown up with, tumbling around primary-coloured dreamscapes in Super Mario 64 and having the time of my life. But as I grew into a pretentious young adult in the early 00s, I started to want more from games, and I wasn’t finding it. So many of them were mindless, or juvenile, or needlessly violent
From Lee Cronin’s The Mummy to Zayn: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
Lee Cronin’s The MummyOut now You probably know what The Mummy is, but do you know what a Lee Cronin is? Allow us to assist: he’s the Irish director responsible for effective indie horror The Hole in the Ground and the highest grossing entry in the Evil Dead franchise, Evil Dead Rises. His version of this classic horror sees a journalist (Jack Reynor) and his wife (Laia Costa) reunited with their child who went missing in the desert eight years ago, with nightmarish consequences.The Wizard of the KremlinOut now Jude Law is, wait for it, Vladimir Putin, with Paul Dano as fictional spin doctor Vadim Baranov in a new thriller from Olivier Assayas (Personal Shopper). Based on the l’Académie française prize-winning debut novel from Giuliano da Empoli.Miroirs No 3Out now German director Christian Petzold returns with a new film (the title refers to the piano solo by Ravel) starring his regular collaborator Paula Beer as a classical piano student recuperating in rural idyll afrer a dramatic car crash
Lost Federico García Lorca verse discovered 93 years after it was written
A previously unknown verse attributed to Federico García Lorca has been discovered 93 years after the celebrated Spanish poet and playwright is believed to have jotted it on the back of one of his manuscripts.Lorca is thought to have written the eight-line poem in 1933 while working on the collection Diván del Tamarit, a homage to the Arab poets of his native Granada.The newly discovered verse was found on the reverse of a manuscript of one of the Tamarit poems – Gacela de la raíz amarga – which the flamenco singer and Lorca enthusiast Miguel Poveda bought from a German antiquarian.It has since been verified by the Lorca expert Pepa Merlo and will feature in a forthcoming book.The brief verse, composed three years before Lorca was murdered in the early days of the Spanish civil war, reveals the poet’s familiar preoccupation with the passing of time: “The clock sings / I count the hours mechanically / Seven o’clock; twelve o’clock / It’s all the same / I am not here / It is the mark of flesh / That I left behind when I departed / So as to know my place / Upon my return
Stephen Colbert on Trump’s Vatican feud: ‘Damn, the pope just read you for filth’
On Thursday night, late-night hosts weighed in on Donald Trump’s tense back and forth with the pope over the war in Iran, high gas prices and outlandish details from a new biography of Robert F Kennedy Jr.On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert focused on Maga’s escalating feud with the pope. Reacting to comments by the House speaker, Mike Johnson, that Pope Leo XIV misunderstood the concept of the just war doctrine, Colbert said incredulously:“Correcting the pope on Catholic theology is a little like going into the woods and saying: ‘Excuse me Mr Bear, do you really think this is the appropriate place for you to be pooping? Who’s going to clean that up?”Colbert went on to explain that the “just war” is a concept of Catholic doctrine that goes back to the earliest days of the church. “It must be in self-defense once all peace efforts have failed,” said the host. “Only then can the war can be said to have ‘just cause’
‘Packaging evil into something funny’: is making fun of Trump now just ‘clownwashing’?
During Donald Trump’s first term, as his lies distorted reality and gaslighted Americans, Stephen Colbert said his goal was to remind his audience: “Hey, you’re not crazy.”But watching political comedy during Trump’s second term – be it a deranged Saturday Night Live impression of a cabinet member, or a rapid-fire late-night monologue full of ICE jokes – it’s hard not to wonder: are we placating ourselves from the enormity of Trump-induced horror?It’s not a new concern, of course. Weak mockery of Nazi leaders may have allowed Germans to “let off steam” while the regime solidified its power. Decades later, as The Daily Show was taking off, some pundits feared it encouraged apathy by rolling its eyes at the political sphere. As the US inches closer to autocracy, how can comedy work against repression, rather than sanitizing its targets – call it “clownwashing”?“We are in a hyper-individualistic, transactional, consumerist kind of culture
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