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Need a Last-Minute Gift? Get to a Bookstore
You’ll be glad you did
It’s less than 48 hours until Christmas and you have no Christmas presents for either friends or family. You assumed you could simply wait until yesterday, buy a few trinkets on Amazon, and have them delivered by drone within 30 minutes. What you did not count on was that due to mounting hysteria nationwide, an F-16 fighter jet blew your purchase out of the sky with a drone-seeking missile somewhere over the swamps of Jersey.
What to do now? To paraphrase Shakespeare: “Get thee to a bookstore.” Why a bookstore, you may ask? Because there’s no better place for last-minute gift shopping and no local merchant that needs your business more. Let me start with the second point first.
It is no secret that even in the very best of times, bookstores operate on a razor-thin margin. For many (if not most), the holiday season determines whether they’ll turn a profit for the year or not, and in some cases whether they will even be able to remain in business in the new year. You can do your part to help prevent the loss of the bookstores we all love simply by patronizing them during the holidays rather than giving even more money to Amazon.
As to why bookstores are the perfect place to buy last-minute Christmas gifts, the reasons are numerous. Even your local Barnes &…
