Page 4 - BusinessWest March 20, 2023

Survival Stories
Independent Bookstores Are Writing New Chapters
BY GEORGE O’BRIEN
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oan Grenier called it “GoFundMe before there was GoFundMe.”
She was referring to a letter she sent out to friends in the South Hadley area almost 30 years ago. She couldn’t find a copy — although she believes she has one some-
where — but remembers the gist.
“I simply said, “I’m in trouble and I need your help,’”
said Grenier, the second-generation owner of the Odys- sey Bookshop in the Village Commons, noting that the missive was sent at a time when just about all small, independent bookstores were in pretty much the same boat she was.
The large chains were beginning to take over the book world and squeeze out their smaller competitors with their huge volumes of books, lower prices, and a maybe a latte to go with all that. Grenier — and she was certainly not alone in this exercise, to be sure — put out a call for help, asking people to support Odyssey and send money if they could.
She raised about $150,000, as she recalls, and it went a long way toward helping her navigate that white- water and write new chapters in a story started by her father, Romeo Grenier, in 1963.
Then, in the early months of COVID, when book- stores — and most other stores as well — were forced to close their doors, Grenier launched an actual GoFund- Me campaign to raise money to take the store through that time of extreme challenge and to a point where it can now celebrate its 60th anniversary.
So did Matt Tannenbaum, owner, for nearly 50 years now, of the Bookstore in Lenox, an institution that got its start in the mid-’60s in the living room of a small, rented house behind an alley that housed a café that came to be known as Alice’s Restaurant.
Tannenbaum raised more than $120,000 in a cam- paign that became subject material for a documentary, called Hello Bookstore, which is now streaming on Apple and Amazon Prime, and has been praised by crit- ics as one of the best documentaries of 2022.
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MARCH 20, 2020
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Joan Grenier, owner of Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley