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Chain bookstores are seeing the light again thanks to younger generations.
They've been on the rebound during the pandemic, Alexandra Lange wrote in a recent Bloomberg article, citing a number of stats: book sales are up 13% year-over-year, more than 172 indie bookstores opened in the US last year, and Barnes & Noble is rapidly expanding. Helping to turn this new page in the book business are the Gen Zers discussing book trends on TikTok and millennials who are nostalgic for the big-box bookstores they grew up with, Lange reported reported.
She said these book chains "were about access and freedom," bringing books to rural America, serving as a teen hangout spot, and helping young adults figure out who they were. "These private enterprises offered accommodation to a broad range of people, in terms of class, race, and age," she wrote.
It makes sense that young adults would long for these comforts during a pandemic world. Nostalgia is a powerful feeling, especially in a troubled economy.
"For many people, particularly young adults or those without a financial safety net, poor economic conditions raise fears of being able to meet financial obligations like rent or student-debt payments," Krystine Batcho, Le Moyne College professor, psychologist, and researcher of nostalgia, told Insider a few months ago. "Nostalgia is a refuge, as people turn to the feelings of comfort, security, and love they enjoyed in their past."
While anyone can feel nostalgic during tough economic times, it can be more potent for those in a state of emerging adulthood — that 20-something limbo between adolescence and full maturity.
"It's a bittersweet time when you trade in childhood innocence for the independence of adulthood, not yet having experienced the more disappointing aspects of social behavior," Batcho said.
While most millennials have aged out of this life stage, nostalgia is an old coping mechanism for the generation who came of age during the financial crisis and its aftermath. They've leaned into the simplicity of their childhood, which explains everything from how millennial pink — a shade associated with youth and innocence — became so popular, to millennials' persisting obsession with the Harry Potter books. Chain bookstores like Barnes & Noble are just the latest on their list of nostalgic memories.
For Gen Z, the bookstores of the '90s are a symbol of a wistful pre-social media time they never got to experience. Michael Pankowski, the founder of the Gen Z marketing consulting firm Crimson Connection, previously told Insider that the pandemic's effect on in-person made the digital world all Gen Z had. "So we feel nostalgic for a time before the internet had become so omnipresent," he said.
The generation digitally bonded during quarantine, taking to TikTok to resurge nostalgic trends and talk about their favorite books.
But the common thread in youth nostalgia is that it fosters a sense of belonging. And that's exactly what chain bookstores provide for millennials and Gen Z.
