The Goods That Refuse to Scale

What's happening

After two decades of decline, independent bookstores in the United States are growing again. The American Booksellers Association reports about 422 new indie shops opened in 2025, a 31% rise over the previous year. The country now has roughly 70% more bookstores than it did six years ago.

"People are really galvanizing around bookstores as a force for good in our culture," Andy Hunter, founder of Bookshop.org, told Fast Company on the eve of Independent Bookstore Day, which fell on April 25 this year. "After 20 years of declining numbers, they're coming roaring back."

Analysts point to a shift in what readers are buying. Indies offer what one writer called "intangible commodities such as connection, empathy, and knowledge, in addition to physical books." The Guardian framed the trend as a structural truth about a country too varied for any single retailer to cover: "Big companies scale efficiency. Small businesses scale relevance."

What the Text says

Jeremiah wrote to a community in exile. The temptation for the deportees in Babylon was to wait out their captivity in a sealed enclave, refusing to invest in a city that was not theirs. The prophet's instruction is the opposite.

Jeremiah 29:7Seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to Yahweh for it; for in its peace you shall have peace.

The verb translated "seek" is darash, a strong word meaning to search out, to inquire after, to pursue with care. It is the same verb used elsewhere for seeking God. The exiles are told to apply that intensity of attention to the foreign city around them.

The noun is even more striking. Shalom appears twice in the verse, once for the city and once for the people. English splits it into "welfare" and "peace," but in Hebrew it is one word. Shalom means wholeness, soundness, the dense web of relationships that lets a place flourish. The text refuses to separate the merchant's well-being from the city's. They share a single noun.

Scripture has a long memory for this kind of figure. The just weights of Proverbs, the field with edges left for gleaning, the householder who knows the names of the poor at the gate. The local merchant is a moral category in the Bible before he is an economic one.

The reflection

The bookstore comeback is a small data point on a long thread. People are repricing the goods that do not scale: a clerk who knows what you read last summer, a shelf curated by a human, a room you can stand in. These are shalom goods. They are made out of attention, and attention does not compress.

Scripture has always assumed certain things cannot be efficiently mass-produced. A blessing. A neighbor. A city that knows your name.