Demographic

Wilson stated that her customers come from all over – such as Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Connecticut – because they have heard about Sister’s Uptown.  Presently, her store is the only Black-owned bookstore left in Manhattan. So people want to support her store when they hear this.  People are Googling “black owned bookstore” and finding and visiting her store.  They think “How did that happen? How did we get to just one bookstore owned by a Black woman in this big city?”  Her customers want to support her independent bookstore because all the others are gone. Not only is Wilson’s store the only female black owned bookstore in the city, but she states that she is one of only fifty four black store book owners left in the United States, a number that went down very quickly from the couple hundred black owned bookstores that were functioning only a few years ago. Due to being such a rare find in the city, Sister’s Uptown has become the sole lighthouse of presence that attracts people from all over. An example that Wilson mentioned was a man all the way from Oakland, California that lacked a community in his neighborhood and reached out to Wilson, and now they are in a monthly book discussion that she organizes by handpicking a book for him every month. She says she gets calls from states like Alabama and Georgia because once again, there is no presence, people feel like they do not have anywhere to go where they can relate to the book seller and the books they focus on pushing.

-Taken from Sisters Uptown Facebook Page

Threats to Commerce 

When asked if the store is worried about the online presence of book sellers, such as Amazon, Wilson answered that she has not really seen a decline in her consumer base. She knows that avid readers like to hold physical books and that is what keeps the stores door open. Not only does she not see a decline, but she believes that there is a revival of the book and that the people are finding flaws in e-books and coming back to the original paper book. Wilson hopes to have an online presence one day so she can share her goals and beliefs nationally, and even internationally, but knows that bookstores run by people are the best way to go book shopping. She states “What amazon lacks — talking to humans; having personal interactions and suggestions. Of course it is easier to click on but people are disregarding bookstores that are right in their community”. Thankfully her community is not one of those and it allows for her business to thrive and stop the trend of slowly reaching bookstore extinction.

-Taken from Sisters Uptown Facebook Page