Hi there!

My name is Katherine D. Morgan and I own Grand Gesture Books, Portland, Oregon's only queer Black woman owned romance bookstore. We host so many community events, from book clubs to author talks to craft nights. Unfortunately, we are struggling and we need your help to ease our burdens.

The caption from our Instagram post:

Dear Grand Gesture Books customers,

It's hard for me to admit that we need help, but I am learning to get over my embarrassment. This isn't the first time that we've asked either, which makes this announcement feel shameful, but I'd rather do this than stress out and close our doors (don't worry: things are not that dire).

Business has been slowing down, and the store is taking a serious toll on me. My mental health is tanking and I feel like I'm trying to keep going the best way I know how: by continuing to show up. Our events feel like the main thing that people are excited to show up for--which is understandable! We host so many great events--but the store is getting quieter. We can't continue to host events, especially off-site ones, if that means having to order a lot of stock that won't move or sell for a while. It's been a rough month, filled with tears of hurt, anger, and defeat. I am so proud of what I have built. I love my team and couldn't do this without them. They mean the world to me and they're one of the best parts of this whole operation.

Much like other bookstores I've talked to, we owe money to publishers, about $6K worth. Our shelves are looking emptier and we haven't been able to do a good restock in a while. We have been ordering just enough for us to get through the weekend for months, and with the holidays coming up, we want to hopefully get some new titles in. It's a catch-22: we need to order books to sell the books but we need to sell books in order books.

I'm hoping to raise about $10K (possibly 12K to cover the fees from GoFundMe), which sounds like a lot and well, it is. We need breathing room and we need to catch up. I want to catch my breath. I want to stop crying in the breakroom when customers leave the store. I want to smile earnestly when customers ask how the store is doing. I'd love to wake up and not feel anxiety about the day's sales before I even open the door. Furthermore, I just want to feel like I'll be okay. I know that I'll be okay, but there's so many different versions of being okay. So many.

The money we will raise will go to a few things:

-Becoming current with publishers. I believe that we owe about $6K for various publishers, including Sourcebooks and Hachette.

-Replenishing our shelves for the holidays.

-Ordering stock for events. We still have a few that need to be placed.

-Finally changing our window displays (the other aspects are WAY more important, but this would be so great before the holidays).

I hope that if you've gotten this far, you'll consider donating or consider sharing this around. Am I cringing at having to post this and ask for help? Yes. I would rather curl up in bed and let my cats eat my face off. But if you see the value in what we do and want to support a queer Black owned romance bookstore in Portland, OR, that would be a dream come true. You can order books through the Bookshop link and/or audiobooks through the Libro.fm one in our linktree, which would be so wonderful. You can also donate to our GoFundMe in the bio as well.

We appreciate you so much.

Love,

Katherine D. Morgan, owner of Grand Gesture Books