W. Kamau Bell visited Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis for his newsletter’s video series and asked co-owner Jamie Schwesnedl why independent bookstores matter right now.
Schwesnedl’s answer has nothing to do with foot traffic. A book changes hands with no tracking pixel attached — you read it, you pass it to a friend, and neither of you becomes a data point. Bell makes the same case from the other side of the industry: when media consolidation closed off the kind of show he used to make, he built one himself and paid the people who helped him do it.