Well, apparently they’ve split the difference, and according to for the next year, the rent will be “only” $17,500/month and Cooper Union will forgive $7,000 of debt owed them.

The school will also provide student help with revising the store’s business plan. [. . .]

In the past year, the bookstore’s owners have reduced their staff through layoffs and have cut their own salaries in half, but it was not enough to offset losses from the poor economy and the rise in sales of electronic books. Mr. Contant said August was the store’s worst month in memory.

But since then, as the store owners went public with their losses, the neighborhood rallied in response. A group called the Cooper Square Committee started a petition to save the store, attracting 40,000 signatures. Business picked up by about 25 percent in September and October, Mr. McCoy said, leading him and Mr. Contant to believe they could continue with a smaller reduction in rent.

The owners have no plans to rehire staff. The store’s finances remain fragile, especially as the current sales levels recede, Mr. Contant said.

The struggling St. Mark’s Bookshop was dealt more bad news Tuesday when its owners were told they will not receive a rent reduction.

Owners Bob Contant and Terry McCoy found out their bid for a $5,000 rent cut was nixed by landlord Cooper Union in a meeting with T.C. Westcott, a vice president for finance and administration at the arts and engineering school.

“They don’t feel they can do anything in terms of the rent,” McCoy said. “She started out by telling us that Cooper is really losing a lot of money.”

This is pretty unfortunately, especially given that more than 40,000 people signed an online petition in support of St. Mark’s rent reduction request. There are a few bright spots in this piece though:

[Westcott] did offer Contant and McCoy a deal: They can defer a month’s rent and pay it back over time. [. . .]

McCoy said the outcome of Tuesday’s meeting, while disappointing, is not devastating because the community has rallied around the bookstore in recent weeks.

“People have gone out of their way to patronize the store,” McCoy said. “It’s helped us enormously.”

This has always been a huge issue—especially in Manhattan—and has helped shutter the doors of many an awesome bookstore. (Lenox Hill, Coliseum, Books & Co., list goes on.) I’ve been reading a lot about the history of independent bookselling (I’m teaching the very informative and interesting in my “Intro to Literary Publishing” class this fall), and as a result could go on and on about this and related issues . . . But I’ll put that off for a rainy (or slighly less busy) day.

Anyway, here’s part of Halford’s explanation for why indie bookstores are important to keep around:

I was explaining all this over e-mail to a colleague, who replied, “I know bookstores are supposed to be good things, but we don’t have video stores anymore, and maybe we need to get used to the new order instead of lamenting the old.” This is what I’d say to his point: it totally sucks that there are no more video stores. I spent long nights hanging out at Kim’s in college, deliberating for hours over which random German film from the nineteen-seventies to take home with me. I actually watched stuff like that all the way through then, maybe since I’d spent so much time and energy looking for it. I even miss Blockbuster: when I was a kid, the Friday-night trip to the video store to pick out a movie was the most exciting event of the week. How I watch a video now is: I browse on Netflix for a while, start watching something, get about five minutes in, wonder if I’ve made the right decision, and start the process over. It’s ridiculous, and yet I can’t…stop…clicking…

My point is that I wish we had been able to save the video store. I know the young citizens of the new order don’t miss it, but kids don’t miss anything: they’re kids. And since we haven’t entirely killed the bookstore yet, I would like us not to. Going into bookstores to browse, to attend readings, to interact with the staff, to see the selection they’ve curated—all these things excite me and entice me to read. If my book-buying experience becomes simply me sitting alone on the couch click, click, clicking, I don’t know what I’ll become (I’ll probably forget I’m looking for books and jump over to Netflix).

Still, my colleague has a point: chaos and destruction are a part of life, and their consequences, impossible to foretell, are not always negative.

Yeah, and on the flip-side, economic, capitalist progress is a part of life, and the consequences of that haven’t always been positive.

Putting aside the occasional frustrations indie bookstores present to me as a publisher of “difficult” books (based on 13 years of working at or with indie stores, I’ve come to believe that 98% of America consists of locations where readers “don’t buy your sort of books”), I’ve come to believe that good bookstores are one of the best things on the planet. It’s been a while since I lived in a town with a solid indie store, and man, do I miss it. Letting my book nerd flag fly here, but there’s something life-affirming about visiting a good bookstore and interacting with other people who really love books and talking about books. There aren’t a lot of places for that sort of interaction in our society (especially not in Rochester, NY—sorry), and it is a great counterweight to the pressure of working hard (and constantly) to make just enough money to be able to make it to the end . . .

So, yeah. Indie bookstores are rad. And I too hope St. Mark’s survives.