Booksellers are worried about the mandatory increases in minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2018, which, according to Publishers Weekly, was the subject of recent Winter Institute Conference in Asheville, North Carolina, where Bradley Graham, owner of the Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, DC, broached the discussion by saying that he was in “the panic phase.”

But it turns out that there might be a solution.

In early February, Borderland Books, an independent bookstore in San Francisco, initially announced its plans to close due to the increases, saying in a statement, “Although all of us at Borderlands support the concept of a living wage in principal [sic] and we believe that it’s possible that the new law will be good for San Francisco — Borderlands Books as it exists is not a financially viable business if subject to that minimum wage.”

But storeowner Alan Beatts said in a new statement on its website that Borderlands might stay open after all, with the support of sponsorship. “Our goal is to gather enough paid sponsors to cover the projected short-fall in income that will be the result of the minimum wage increase in San Francisco... This process will continue each year until we close, either because of a lack of sponsorship or for other reasons.”

In other words, Borderlands will be offering $100 paid sponsorships of the store. “If we get 300 sponsors before March 31, we will stay open for the remainder of 2015,” he wrote.

Sponsorships will include benefits such as seating at author events, the ability to rent space in the café outside of normal operating hours, and access to preview sales of rare and collectable books.

“I wonder if this idea—‘Look, if you put up this money, we get to stay in business, an in exchange we will do these things for you to demonstrate your appreciation’—I wonder how many businesses that might work for,” Beatts said to the New Yorker. “It could be applicable anywhere.”