Editor’s note: It is with a heavy heart that the Los Alamos Reporter shares ownER Jill Lang’s announcement that Samizdat Bookstore and Teahouse will probably close in February, despite “a phenomenal year”. Her post is published below in its entirety.

BY JILL LANG
Samizdat Bookstore & Teahouse
Los Alamos

A business is measured by how much money it was able to bank over the course of a year (unless you are an AI company, which we are not), and by those metrics this year was a wild success for the bookstore. Our total sales were up 37.83% over 2024, and December sales alone were up 45.69%. Behind those mind boggling numbers is a team of employees who took agency over the expansion, stocking, and creative direction and are responsible for every metric of success this store has experienced. Those numbers also reflect the intentional choices of every single one of you who repeatedly decided to spend more money in a much less convenient fashion in order to be an active partner in keeping a brick-and-mortar bookstore in Los Alamos. All of this–employees’ enthusiastic engagement and your enthusiastic engagement combined with your financially disadvantageous choice to shop with us–is humbling beyond words.

And None of it Matters
I tried a moonshot and I failed. It’s that simple. A reflexive reaction in Los Alamos is to blame The County or The Landlords when a business fails, but these entities are not the culprit. We have no struggles with the county and our landlord is great. We are in a fully accessible space with 2 accessible restrooms and a commercial kitchen, all of which are in good working condition inside a property well maintained by our property manager. We occupy a unicorn space in this town, and it’s why it was worth that moonshot in this specific location. There is no other location in this entire county even remotely appropriate.

The bookstore is failing because the business model is bad. When we tripled our footprint in June I laid it all out on book inventory, because our fundamental purpose is to be a brick-and-mortar bookstore where people hang out and browse titles on the shelves. We don’t have an issue getting people into the space, we’ve hosted well attended jazz nights, junk journaling nights, bean dinner nights, brunches, etc etc. Kids swarm the place when school lets out.

Obviously some people buy books, but a critical mass do not. And that is absolutely not an indictment of people. It is absolutely an indictment of the business model. I can stand in our parking lot and see a number of successful businesses. This is a me problem and a business model problem, and that’s it.

I do not have the skill set to pivot towards the much heavier emphasis on food and beverage that it would take to be successful, nor do I have the cash reserves to hire someone with that skill set. Nor do I have the cash reserves to compensate current employees in a way that reflects their incredible accomplishments last year. I probably have the cash reserves to close with little to no debt in February, as long as nothing bad happens like I break an arm or a family member gets seriously ill. In those cases the business is immediately dead, that has always been true, and these circumstances are no longer sustainable.

Well this is a depressing newsletter.

Seriously, that’s it?
Some folks want to try some things, and that is once again intensely humbling. Who am I to question people’s agency when it was other people’s agency that got us this far? More might come out mid-January. That said, I think transparency is really important, especially when there are so many gift cards out there that were purchased in good faith by so many people.

Yeah, why’d you sell so many gift cards if you knew this was a possibility?
Because I wanted to give everything I had in trying to make this work. If I refused to sell gift cards I would have undermined everything our incredible employees were doing. But bank account numbers don’t lie, and sales history suggests we will be in grinding, ugly, irreversible debt by April if I don’t act now. We should have enough money now to fulfill our gift card obligations, and I am very, very interested in doing so. Please submit special orders through our website or come in to browse. We will continue to hold open our publisher accounts through January to ensure there are books for you to browse as well as fulfill special order requests. We will also continue to run the kitchen for boba through January, since I know a lot of kids got gift cards specifically for drinks. All other kitchen events (Monday Supper Club, etc) are cancelled.

Thank you. Again.
A business is a continuous and evolving partnership between the owner, employees, and customers. You formed this business as much or more than anyone else, and I am both profoundly grateful for your participation and deeply sad that I was unable to hold up my end of the bargain. But it’s important to deal with reality, and if this chapter is to close I would like to do it as cleanly and transparently as possible (what I am saying is, bring in your gift cards).