What’s Up? 

We’re rallying to keep our beloved Loyalty Bookstores operating and growing into the future.  

Like many small businesses around the country, we’re fighting to stay open following the pandemic slump—and also, as we face the realities of operating a store dedicated to selling books by queer, trans and nonbinary, and BIPOC authors. It’s already a hard business with the rise of Am*zon, and with book bans, and with that big uptick in sales on books about race swinging downward. But on top of all of that, Loyalty has also experienced a rise in anti-queer sentiment and transphobia at our physical locations during our Drag Story Hour. We’re concerned for the safety and well-being of our customers — and also our staff, who are the beating heart of our stores. Our staff is mostly queer and people of color, some of whom are disabled and neurodivergent. It is time for us to focus on stable growth, safety, and moving our mission forward rather than just surviving. 

Loyalty is one of the only bookstores in the country that’s co-owned by two people from two different marginalized backgrounds. We are queer people who are also Black, Filipina, transracially adopted, neurodivergent, and disabled. We’ve worked in the book industry for a combined 17 years, and see the huge need for a store dedicated to creating a community for readers, authors and writers like us — books by queer, trans and nonbinary, and BIPOC writers. We have two locations, one in Washington D.C.’s Petworth neighborhood, and another in Silver Spring, Maryland, and we’ve been an active participant in our communities, hosting events and readings, fundraising and providing books for nonprofit organizations.

This fundraiser will support Loyalty Bookstores as we address some immediate needs and plan for our long-term future. There’s more info in the FAQ section, but here are the basics:

Immediate Needs: 

• Paying down debts and securing new, local vendors
• Creating an emergency fund (for things like the repair of our Petworth location when it flooded recently!)
• Changing our Silver Spring operations due to safety concerns
• Lawyers and accountants for stable growth of the business as we expand 
• Fully launching our Book Mobile, which we’ve lovingly nicknamed “Octavia Bus-ler.” It’s a passenger van that we’ve built out so that we can bring our diverse curation of books to schools and festivals. We need a dedicated staff person for booking and maintaining the Book Mobile. We’ll also be partnering with nonprofit literary organizations to bring our Book Mobile to communities in need. The Book Mobile is one of our major long-term goals, especially as we’re seeing an increase in book bans — books that we pride ourselves on championing.  

Long-term Goals:

• Re-vamping our website and online store in order to streamline the fulfillment process and to make it more mobile friendly
• Dedicating staff energy to the community building and partnerships Loyalty was founded on before 2020 forced us into survival mode. We want to double down on working with schools, literacy nonprofits, and our community leaders to build and support a network of diverse representation in the awesome DMV. 
• Moving toward an employee-owned model
• Purchasing our own building and creating writer residencies and ongoing community programming for queer, disabled, immigrant, BIPOC authors and youths (youths!) 

What Do I Get? 

• Perks will be a combination of limited edition and classic Loyalty swag, lifetime memberships for discounted shopping, and chances for unique experiences with amazing authors! 

FAQ:

What makes Loyalty Bookstores so special?

Loyalty is an indie bookstore based in Washington, D.C.’s Petworth neighborhood and in Silver Spring, Maryland. Our mission is to bring books by queer, trans and nonbinary, and authors of color to our readers — and to create a space for the bold growth of this community. 

As owners who are also long-time book industry veterans, we’re also dedicated to nurturing our staff, and creating sustainable career paths for booksellers of marginalized identities. One of our long-term goals is to move Loyalty toward an employee-owned model.  

We’re also very vocal and active members of the bookselling and publishing industry and are committed to creating a more equitable, diverse and sustainable future. In addition to our curated book selection, we’ve hosted hundreds of author events, both in-person and virtually, from cozy in-store events to larger venues like the Lincoln Theatre and the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial DC Public Library. We’ve been honored to host wonderful authors who tie into our mission like Jason Reynolds, Nicole Chung, Jesmyn Ward, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Nikole Hannah-Jones. We’re proud that we’ve hosted launch events for first-time authors and indie press authors, featuring them in-store, in our subscription boxes, and shouting from the rooftop via staff picks and social media.    

We’re dedicated to our store and to growing it ambitiously. But we’re also in need of community support and additional funding to stay afloat and make our future plans a reality.

Who is Loyalty owned by?

We’re Hannah and Christine! 

Hannah Oliver Depp (she/they) is a long-time bookseller, who began her career at Politics & Prose and WORD Bookstores. Hannah is the president of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA), and is on the board of Bookshop.org. Hannah has a Masters in English from American University. Hannah’s on Instagram at @oliverdepp. 

Christine Bollow (she/her)—who you might recognize from her Bookstagram account @readingismagical, joined Loyalty in 2020 and became a co-owner in 2023. Previously, Christine worked as a quality control editor for audiobooks. She is a graduate of Barnard College, a 2022 Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree, and currently serves on the DEIC for the American Booksellers Association.

Both Hannah and Christine are devoted “litizens” — moderating author panels, bookseller education sessions, and are frequent judges for major book awards and honors. They have zero chill about books and championing the authors that make our intersecting communities exceptional! 

Why are you fundraising now? I thought that Loyalty Bookstores was doing so well based on news coverage!

Running a bookstore is expensive! We had a small fundraiser in 2019 to open our first location, which helped us place our first book orders as a pop-up.  Following the opening of our full location in the first months of 2020 we obviously ran into some challenges! While we received lots of press in the summer of 2020 due to the increased attention on Black owned businesses, we’re still facing the realities of operating a business in 2023 and are adjusting our business plan to ensure the physical and financial safety of our staff and store. To be blunt, many orders placed in 2020 were never picked up and the entire business of publishing and selling books has been under intense strain due to issues with fulfillment and access to resources that deeply cut into the operations costs of a small business like ours. Having grown to meet the demands of 2020/1, we now find ourselves with some wonderfully devoted customers and neighbors but a much smaller revenue stream and ever growing costs. 

What are y’all doing to cut costs? 

While operation and inventory costs have continued to rise over the last three years, we’ve continued to negotiate our leases with our landlords, look for different vendors for our supplies, and improve staffing and operations to create a more sustainable store model. Operating across multiple locations and event venues can be costly, so we are working on staff streamlining and cross training while also offering support. No one benefits from exhaustion! Christine and Hannah have invested their personal savings and removed themselves from payroll as needed to support the store during this leaner time. Loyalty has always been a passion project sustained by community and sacrifice, but we hope to move it to stability in order to ensure the long term health of the store, its employees, and owners. 

What will this money go toward?

Ensuring staff and customer safety, especially at our Silver Spring location:

In recent months, we’ve become increasingly concerned for the physical safety of our customers and staff at the Silver Spring store, where we host Drag Story Hour, which has been crashed by anti-LGBTQ protestors. Multiple local news outlets have reported on the worst of these incidents,  but do not account for the regularly recurring toll on staff and the safety of the children and others in attendance. While the community wonderfully supports us and puts themselves on the line, we want to invest in further safety and training for staff for the long term as well. Our current reality is that our location with only one exit and tension between the private and publicly owned spaces in the corporate Downtown Silver Spring inhibits our safety protocols. 

Plus: rent at our Silver Spring store is hefty for a small business like us! And though we have the seemingly-constant presence of these dueling, screaming sidewalk preachers who consider us sinners (!), we unfortunately aren’t seeing as much foot traffic as we need to justify the rent. We’re working with our landlord and neighboring businesses to create better traffic and safety, but it costs a lot. Teaming up with other local businesses, artists, and makers, and investing in better security will help us move in that direction.   

Overall Emergency Funds:

We’re hoping to pay off some debts incurred to grow the store in 2020 and also to create an emergency fund for our store and staff. Our Petworth location recently flooded, and though we were lucky in that we were able to minimize the damage to inventory, this still required closing our store as we cleaned and dried out the space. This is just one example of the not-infrequent types of emergencies we face.

How can I help?

• Donating anything that you can is helpful!
• Spreading the word about the fundraiser on social media and directly to your friends via word of mouth!
• Attend Loyalty events!
• Visit the store and tag us on social! 
• And of course, visiting our physical locations or website to purchase some books. (It’s never too early to start your holiday shopping; why not place orders for that online via our website?)