<div>Dear friends: I need your help.
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<div>I’m proud of everything Books with Pictures has done so far. We won an Eisner Award in 2022. We have been in at least the Top Five in pretty much every Portland popular vote with a comic shop category, and some without one. The shop has been incredibly fortunate to have our manager, Nick Orr, with us since we opened. We were able to spin off the Books with Pictures brand and ethos into a sister store, Books with Pictures Eugene, opened in 2020 by my talented and brilliant business partner Andrea Gilroy. And we’ve built a phenomenal community of comics readers and creators.
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<div>Just this year, we were chosen to participate in downtown Portland’s Pop-Up Shop program, where I have (mostly single-handedly, over my sore body’s objections) built out a 2000-square-foot retail location with mostly borrowed or donated furniture, to participate in the ongoing revitalization of Portland’s beautiful downtown. We have been a part of Portland’s Pride celebrations nearly every year that we have been open, and hosted Book Fairs all over the state. We have thrown a mini-con for the past 4 years, and are already planning our best yet for 2026. And we have hosted an absolutely dreamy cast of comics creators for signings, book launches, talks, readings, book clubs, and more. I serve on the boards of ComicsPro, the trade organization for comics retail, and of Portland’s newest museum, the Northwest Museum of Cartoon Arts. When our customers were stuck at home in the early COVID times, I personally delivered comics to their doorsteps. We are pretty great. And yet.
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<div>Running a comics shop is hard. In some ways, it is hard in the way that all brick-and-mortar small business is hard: there is often a cheaper alternative online, we are never able to pay our staff as well as they deserve, unavoidable costs go up every year, and the bizarre economics of the present moment make everything uncertain. And it is also hard in unique ways: nearly all of our products have prices fixed by their publishers, so that we can’t just hike the cost of risotto when we need a better profit margin. We handle an almost unmatched number of new SKUs every week, requiring unique software and a great deal of hands-on work hours. Disruptions in distribution over the past handful of years have made every week feel like it has held a new crisis in data management, shipping dates, or the nuances of ordering products. Ordering timelines can vary from three weeks out to three months out, and can ship on schedules so variable that budgeting for each week or month’s product cost is virtually impossible: sometimes there is a trickle, and sometimes there is a flood. And of course, for reasons that continue to mystify me, sometimes the customers just don’t come in.
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<div>Books with Pictures is a comics store unlike any other, and there are challenges that come with that too. We’re not just serving traditionally underrepresented comics audiences, we’re trying to nurture them and grow them. If we were the sort of store that put the bulk of our resources into selling high-priced variants and slabs to speculators, we’d be having an easier time of it. But what we care about is readers, and finding comics for everyone to read and love–and that means we’re doing this on Hard Mode.
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<div>I’ve had personal struggles as well: since opening the shop, I’ve divorced, had a major shoulder surgery, been in two serious auto accidents (each of which left long-term effects), had a still-unsolved chronic pain issue arise, fell off a ladder and broke my foot, moved shop, moved house, lost friends, lost pets, and more. And I’ve raised two spectacular kids from ages 4 and 6 up to 14 and 16. And navigated a pandemic. You know. Life stuff.
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<div>Financially, the store has never done much better than breaking even, and our cash-flow situation has become exceptionally challenging at the moment. Comics stores’ payment terms with distributors range from 7 days to 90 days–with more stringent penalties and less grace given than there once was–and we don’t always have time to sell books before we have to pay for them. We’ve been making ends meet with short-term loans from friends, loans from our card processors, and other temporary infusions of cash, just to get bills paid on time. For a long time, I put personal money into the business, but, well, I’m out of that. For longer, I lived on personal credit in lean times in order to make sure that the shop could operate, but, well, I’m out of that, too. For a while, expenses kept going up, but sales also kept going up, so we were okay. But at the moment, sales are down. And expenses have stayed up. And we are stuck–just at the moment when we should be stocking up for the holiday shopping season.
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<div>The most frustrating thing is that we’ve got a lot to look forward to. Andrea and I are planning some things for 2026 that should shore us up against retail uncertainty and help us continue to fulfill our mission. (We’re brewing up a really fun book club idea, for one thing.) More on those very soon. But first, this crisis.
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<div>I’ve started a GoFundMe for the immediate problem. I’ve set a goal of $42,500, which is the magical amount that would get the shop current on all of our accounts, get us out of our frantic hole-digging mode, and allow us to look forward rather than scramble backward.
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<div>So, that’s it. That’s the pitch. On the one hand, this is the best job I’ve ever had the privilege to do, and I recognize that it isn’t owed to me. Books with Pictures is a for-profit business, at least in theory, and I am mortified that it is not, right now, making a profit. But at the same time, we work very hard to give back something of significant value to our neighborhood, to our city, and to the business of comics as a whole. And I don’t want to shut all of that down, if the cost of keeping it is just swallowing my pride and asking for help.
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<div>Thank you for listening. Thank you for giving what you can.
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Alexander Johnson

Katherine Kenneally

Anonymous

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Jonpaul Kronser

John Jameson

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Poppy Prieto

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Keep Books with Pictures Alive: Donate Now

Keep Books with Pictures Alive: Donate Now

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