Cameron Bren
Ald. Marsha Rummel, who helped found Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative in 1989, says that the tiny shop at 426 W. Gilman St. has always been more than just a store.
Rainbow, where Rummel worked for 22 years, is also a gathering place for radical groups and activists trying to change the world.
“We took under-the-tent things like Books to Prisoners, Infoshop, and just a different approach to access to knowledge and information, that it should be available to people and not just for sale, we would try to de-commodify,” Rummel says. “It had a radical perspective that is harder to find in the media these days.”
“We would use the profits from [book sales] to bring speakers to town, do literary and cultural events,” she adds.
But the future of the store is now in jeopardy, with fears that it may have to close at the end of the month. The volunteer-run collective has struggled to adapt in the age of digital media and internet booksellers.
The store’s volunteers are making a last-ditch effort with a clearance sale, in hopes of raising enough money to pay rent moving forward.
Although she no longer works there, Rummel would hate to see the shop close. “The thing I think will be a huge loss is all the various people who came to Madison because of Rainbow Bookstore; hundreds of authors and artists and musicians came our way because of our relationship with their publisher or whatever.”
Rainbow volunteer Kareem Mayouf says the radical literature purveyor has found itself in uncertain times, struggling to compete with online retailers and unable to offer digital content.
“Sales have been declining very rapidly, and we are beginning to lose the capacity to rake in enough revenue,” says Mayouf, who has volunteered at the store for two years.
The bookstore is struggling to keep up payments to publishers, and the debt has mushroomed, Mayouf says. Along with regular operating expenses, which doesn't include any paid staff, the business model may no longer be viable.
“It is very difficult to keep a business open because there are so many expenses that you have to worry about,” Mayouf says. “For us...the debt, the rent and a number of other expenses are just a part of keeping the store open.”
The cooperative was founded in the late ’80s by people who worked at the People’s Bookstore, a radical shop that was privately owned on the same block.
“At some point a group of us thought, since we’ve been working as volunteers in a collective way, maybe it should be owned cooperatively given the values we thought the bookstore represented,” Rummel says.
The volunteers have regularly had to adapt to a changing marketplace. Big-box stores posed an early threat. For a time, the bookstore sustained itself by selling textbooks for sympathetic UW-Madison professors.
“Up to that point we had developed exclusive relationships with professors,” Rummel says. “They would give us their book lists, we would order their books, students would come to the bookstore...so we had a definite way of having an income flow.”
But then many professors began posting literature online to help save students money. Eventually, Rainbow’s textbook sales declined to the point where the shop wasn’t selling a high enough volume, and it had to drop them altogether.
Local bookstores also can’t compete with the prices of online vendors, and there is less demand for hard-copy books overall because of ebooks, Mayouf says. He says it’s been worse for Rainbow than other booksellers, suggesting the literature they specialize in has also lost demand.
“Rainbow has always been a radical bookstore because we sell a lot of literature that isn’t exactly mainstream,” Mayouf says. “It is based in anarchist and socialist theory, so that might be one of the reasons, because that kind of literature is not as popular nowadays and that is a very important aspect of the bookstore.”
Over the years, there were a lot of different suggestions for how Rainbow could ramp up revenue, says Rummel. The idea of a coffee shop and a bar had been floated, but the members could never agree on a strategy, especially since the only thing all members had in common was their passion for the literature, Rummel says.
It would take “a very committed person” to get the ball rolling, Rummel says. “It’s a matter of having a person to organize it, and I don’t know if that person ever showed up.”
Although the shop once had four employees and a board of directors, it is now entirely run by volunteers. This has made getting information about what is happening at the store difficult. Many people involved with the shop declined to speak to Isthmus about their plans — some accused the paper of hastening its demise by attempting to report on it. However, a sign in the shop’s window announces an “end of business summer clearance.”
Mayouf says the shop’s volunteers are keeping the organizations that use the space in mind as it contemplates shutting down.
“Rainbow houses a number of other organizations like LGBT Books to Prisoners, Infoshop, and Wisconsin Books to Prisoners,” Mayouf says. “With the closing of Rainbow those organizations are likely going to move somewhere else.”
Mayouf says Rainbow embodies the values of its volunteers, and if the bookstore ultimately closes, “those values will still exist in the community.”
The shop hopes to liquidate Rainbow’s inventory this month to pay off as much debt as possible and get the books to those who could use it, Mayouf says.
“Everything in the store is at least 50% off,” Mayouf says. “We want to make as much as possible, but it is also important for us to stick to our values and make sure all of these books are available for working-class people.”
Rummel says the shop had one remarkable champion with Harvey, the resident cat. His presence helped keep both volunteers and shoppers coming back.
If people care about Rainbow, Rummel says, “they should go there and help either with a donation or find some books or give Harvey a couple little scratches. He is a sweet cat.”
