Bookish people, the stereotype goes, are introverts who prefer to stay home. So you’d think the recent social distancing measures would be a bibliophile’s dream: An excuse to read alone for weeks on end.
That’s not the case for Queen Anne Book Company bookseller Tegan Tigani, who has been working from home since March 25. During a typical shift at the bookstore, Tigani would talk books with customers all day long. Pivoting to online retailing was not in her life plan, but she’s spent most of April and May processing online orders and taking phone calls from the many die-hard QABC customers who are sticking with their neighborhood shop.
The complicated logistics of shipping books to customers is stressful. “You’ve got to be super-careful and super-focused. If you screw the order up,” Tigani tells me, “people aren’t going to get their books. And you don’t want to be one more disappointment in their lives” in the middle of a pandemic…
(Keep reading the article, including three excellent book recommendations from Seattle-area book workers, at the Seattle Times.)
Paul Constant 