May 19—For Santa Fe author Carmella Padilla, bookstores have been "everything" for the decades she has been writing books about art, food and Northern New Mexican culture.
"People spend a lot of time online these days, and I'm grateful that people can read what I write online, but there's nothing like a good old-fashioned book," she said.
Padilla is a co-founder of the Santa Fe International Literary Festival, which is bringing authors from around the world to the City Different for events and talks Friday through Sunday.
The relationship between the festival and Santa Fe's many local, independent bookstores is a symbiotic one.
Despite the yearslong proliferation of digital media, local booksellers say their sales are up compared to last year.
Dorothy Massey, who has owned the independent Collected Works Bookstore and Coffeehouse for 28 of its 45 years, said her business continues to grow.
Massey has set up a pop-up bookstore at the city convention center with about 5,000 books for the festival. Collected Works has stocked new and old titles from authors who will appear at the festival, such as Jennifer Egan, Colum McCann and John Irving.
Massey calls Santa Fe a "very literary" city.
"It is a very collegial group, by and large," Massey said of Santa Fe's 18 independent bookstores. "There are petty jealousies, and we're all in competition supposedly. But since we're a general bookstore, we try to stay away from other stores' specialties."
She said they will call each other when they have a customer looking for a book they can't find.
During the early, uncertain days of the coronavirus pandemic, Collected Works remained open and kept employees on payroll by selling books curbside.
"There were nine of us working — masked and gloved, six feet apart — and nine of us went in, and nine of us came out," Massey said.
Jean Devine, who has owned Garcia Street Books for six years, steered her shop through the pandemic as well.
She said it took "a lot of nimbleness" during a time when direction seemed to be changing every other week.
"It was like dancing," Devine said. "We did all kinds of things for people to get their books — we did shipping, home deliveries, curbside, whatever it took to still try to be a resource to the community. Anything to remain a constant during times when we were encountering things none of us had ever dealt with before."
Devine said her book sales have also increased. She believes physical books will never die because they offer a different experience than digital formats, one that appeals to more than one sense.