When the owners of Haight Street’s Booksmith decided this month to stop selling Harry Potter books, they expected conversations, not controversy. The team collectively chose to stop carrying J.K. Rowling’s books after the author launched a “women’s fund” in late May aimed at financing efforts to dismantle transgender rights.
For years, Rowling has criticized transgender activism and promoted the idea that trans women should not have legal protection from sex-based discrimination.
In response, the Booksmith team suggested — with both an Instagram post and a sign in the store — that anyone interested in Rowling’s books find used copies or purchase other fantasy novels.
“There’s a direct throughline between what [Rowling’s] doing with the money she’s making on book sales as a living author who’s still collecting royalties and something that, frankly, harms us and our trans siblings and people that we care about in our community,” said Booksmith co-owner Camden Avery.
At first, the shop received mostly praise, Avery said, as a flood of people commended staff online and in-person, thanking them for standing up for their values. The shop received shout-outs from local authors Charlie Jane Anders and Maggie Tokuda Hall, as well as long-time shoppers.
But then came the trolls.
As the post spread beyond Booksmith’s typical orbit, the team noticed a surge in what Avery describes as “internet warriors” slamming the shop on social platforms. “After something hits a critical mass on the internet, people who are not actually involved in our daily life are going to have feelings about it,” he said, describing streams of comments accusing Booksmith of “banning” Harry Potter or politicizing literature.
“It’s false pearl-clutching and a misapprehension of what censorship is,” Avery said. “We’re exercising our First Amendment right to operate a private business in line with our values.”
At a time when threats to trans rights have ratcheted up, leaving many in the LGTBQ+ community terrified, the store’s owners felt compelled to act on their values.
“Some people are like, ‘Enough with the politics. Just be a bookstore,’” Avery said. “But we don’t have the luxury of pretending anymore that anything that we do is not related to this political moment, this imperialist, fascist regime that we’re trying to survive.”
Booksmith this year also stopped selling books by fantasy writer Neil Gaiman after he was accused of rape and human trafficking. Despite the negative comments online about removing Rowling’s books, Avery’s happy that the shop’s message has spread.
“If anything, I think it’s cool that the word is getting out, so that more people can shop ethically if they want to with J.K. Rowling,” he said. “She’s doing really harmful, awful shit with her money, and the more people who know, the better.”
The team heard from other U.S. bookstores, asking if they could borrow Booksmith’s language for their own signs, according to Avery. Another upside is that Booksmith received a surge in donations to Books Not Bans, a funding drive in partnership with Fabulosa Books in the Castro that sends queer-affirming books to organizations across the country. The shop has raised more than $1,000, he said. “That’s heartening, because it directly impacts people whose lives are being diminished by actual book bans.”