Dean W. Hunt, assistant manager at foreign book specialist Schoenhof’s, says that in the days after the war started he noticed “a most visible decrease in business,” even in phone calls to the store.

“The war has had an impact on business,” Kramer says. “More people are staying home and watching CNN.”

“It’s starting to come back now,” he says. “People are getting the sense that it’s probably going to go on for a long time and life has to go on.”

Solano says sales at Grolier have “plummeted” since the start of the war, but she attributes the fall to “the depression factor.”

Since the start of the war, she says, people have been so depressed that “fourteen out of fifteen of my customers can’t read poetry.”

Solano says war in the past has meant tough times for Grolier.

Sales nearly stopped altogether after she hung signs in her window protesting the Gulf War in the early 1990s, she says.

“I was boycotted so heavily by people in the Square, it almost brought me under,” she says.

The Battle of the Rent

The independent bookstores are all fighting the same battle against Harvard Square’s notoriously high rents.

Both Harvard Bookstore and Grolier are owned by Harvard, Kramer says.

“A lot of our future is in their hands,” Kramer says, adding that Harvard Bookstore has three years left on its lease. “Harvard up until now has been rather beneficent, but I have no idea what’s going to happen in the long run.”

Harvard’s comparably low rent has allowed Grolier to stay in the Square, Solano says.

“I think if I had to pay the average rent in the Square I would have been long gone,” she says. “They’ve given me a break.”

But even though many Square booksellers are struggling to pay the rent and keep themselves in business, they say they don’t really compete with one another, and often refer customers to other independent bookstores.