Many Nevadans are adjusting to the proliferation of COVID-19 by practicing social distancing, stocking up on supplies and staying at home. The Nevada Independent is sharing their stories each day. 

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At Writer's Block near Las Vegas' Arts District, boxes and book-packing assembly lines have replaced the scene of customers leisurely browsing through shelves stacked with carefully curated literary works.

Drew Cohen, a co-owner of the independent bookstore, said he and his husband Scott Seeley decided to move to only online orders after "a few awkward days" of watching customers wander through the store, "touching everything in sight." Since then, he estimated the store has gone from receiving one or two website orders a week to anywhere from 20 to 40 orders per day.

"I'm glad that people are using the online service, but it's been a total transformation of how we do business and kind of a baptism by fire where we've had to develop systems for order fulfillment overnight," Cohen said. "Before, we would just get one order here or there and could take our time packing it and bringing it into the post office."

Most of the orders that the store has been filling are escapist fiction in the science fiction and fantasy genres as well as "bucket list" classics, but Cohen said that he has also seen more "on the nose" purchases, including Albert Camus' "The Plague" and the post-apocalyptic novel "Station Eleven."

"I applaud their courage," he said with a laugh.

When the store shut down, Cohen also suspended the young writer's workshops and book club meetings that the shop regularly hosts. He is unsure whether he will move that programming online.

"Each of our transactions takes so much longer to process ... I have less time now than I did before we opened, so I've been too exhausted to even think about or do some of that programming," he said.

The majority of the deliveries are processed through the postal service. Still, Cohen said the store does have a curbside pickup program similar to other restaurants and businesses in Nevada. 

Even though Cohen can keep filling orders and his landlord is working with the store on their rent payments, he is nervous about the long term health of the business.

"We are still paying our employees while we're closed right now, and it is eating through our savings," he said. "We went into this in sort of healthy position, and this crisis has removed a lot of that buffer. And then of course, we still don't know how long it's going to last for."

Cohen said that the business applied for Small Business Administration loans, but that the process was not particularly easy.

"We have some friends in the community who are small business operators who are also applying for those loans," he said. "And we're kind of like, between all of us, waiting to see who manages to finish the process first and how it goes."

Another worry of Cohen's is that publishers and consumers will continue to rely more heavily on online systems rather than brick and mortar retailers, which could place financial stress on businesses such as Writer's Block because shipping and packaging costs drive up expenses.

He pointed out that Amazon is experiencing a surge in orders during the coronavirus, while local bookstores across the country are struggling to remain open.

"It almost feels like a preview of what we could be experiencing in several years anyway, which is that by the time we want to opt-out of a company like Amazon, the options to opt-out are no longer available," Cohen said.

Despite his fears, Cohen hopes that customers will order from local stores that are invested in the community. He said he is also trying to focus on the day-to-day functioning of the business and not to think about what may happen in the future.

"I'm grateful that we have these web orders because ... it's allowed me to not have to think about too far into the future when I'm just packing up a book and creating the postage for it," he said. "And when I'm not on the clock, I am trying not to consume too much media that is about the virus."