First of all, you should read “American Literature Loses Out to Consolidation,” by Richard Howorth which was published in The New York Times today.
That having been said, my favorite bookstore to go to is the Stand down on 12th Street. I’ve started taking the kid there, and I feel like I’m completing one of those “All My Life’s a Circle” moments where I was taken to bookstores as a kid, and I now do that for my kid. One of the biggest reasons I love going to the Stand is that it smells like a bookstore; it smells like stacks and stacks of books. And now, slowly, no matter where I travel to, I have started seeing little bookshops again. In little downtowns, or strip malls, bookstores – new and used – are becoming present again.
I worked, for a very short time, for an independent publisher right out of college, and I tip my hat to people to run small publishing houses; you only do it because you love it, not because you want to become rich. At those houses, everything seems like it’s on the verge of failing, people outside of the business treat you like your crazy, and there is no good business model other than being bought out by one of the “big houses” one day. But, I must add, some of the smartest people I have ever met work in small publishing.
And these small publishers are where almost all authors get started. They are the farm leagues of the publishing world, and they are vital to the ecosystem, especially when it comes to giving new voices, subjects, and people an opportunity. The more the big house become centralized, the more likely they take up the shelf space at all level of bookstores, forcing out the little guys, and thus killing off anything new from being discovered.
Keep this in mind when you bookshop. Look to see who is publishing that book you are looking at. Every dollar truly helps the little guy.
(Say! If you happen to find that this blog are some knees of bees, be a pal and give it a like, a comment or a share! You’d be doing this Daddy-o a true solid!)
