WHY THE PRINTED BOOK WILL LAST ANOTHER 500 YEARS | October 14, 2015 By Adam Sternbergh

Books | Print vs. E-books | Reading | Trends

It’s always an intellectual mistake to assume that the thing you love the most might be the exception. I remember listening to a public-radio conversation a few years ago in which two people debated the necessity and romance of record stores (a very large and storied one in NYC had just closed) and thinking, Well, of course record stores are going to close, it’s sad but it’s the way of the world, and feeling kind of smug about it because I don’t frequent record stores. And then realizing a moment later that in two, or five, or maybe ten years time—or maybe sooner—I could be listening to two people on the radio having this exact same wistful conversation about bookstores.

I didn’t feel so smug after that.

Bookstores are a sacred space for me and books are hallowed objects. I’ve worked in two of the former and owned and treasured an innumerable number of the latter. (I honestly don’t know the number of books I currently own; I do know that when my wife and I moved most recently, our moving company charged us extra afterward because we’d seriously underestimated the number of boxes of books.) My first and favorite activity in any new city is to locate and visit the best bookstore; I literally Google the city’s name and “best bookstore” and see what comes up. This almost never fails to lead me not only to a great bookstore but to the best, most interesting neighborhood in town. Read more...

Outrage in Bronx as Barnes & Noble Is Set to Close

Books & Bookstores

By SARAH MASLIN NIR NOV. 2, 2016

Shauna Rose and her son, Nicholai, 4, visited the children’s section of the Barnes & Noble in the Bronx on Wednesday. She says they go there every day after school and read the picture book “I Need My Monster.” Credit Amir Levy for The New York Times

Every day after school, 4-year-old Nicholai Rose demands that his mother take him first to the park then to the Barnes & Noble in the Baychester neighborhood of the Bronx. There, they snuggle in a corner in the children’s section and, each time, read “I Need My Monster,” his favorite picture book.

In a few months their ritual will end — permanently — when the store closes for good, leaving the Bronx, a borough with nearly 1.5 million people, without one general-interest bookstore. For residents, the closing carries a painful sting the borough knows too well, of being long underserved and overlooked, which persists even as the Bronx is experiencing a renaissance.

“How am I going to tell him that the bookstore is going?” said Nicholai’s mother, Shauna Rose, 29, as she sat in the store on Wednesday, the monster book on her lap. “And there’s nothing else.”

With 50,000 titles in its inventory, the Barnes & Noble opened in the Bronx in 1999. Two years ago, it nearly closed after the landlord sought to raise the rent. But it remained open after a public outcry, and after elected officials stepped in to assist in the rent negotiations. It has withstood the economic crunch that shut down smaller bookshops in the borough over the years. While there are a few bookstores in the Bronx attached to various universities and some stores that sell religious texts, the Barnes & Noble remains the last of its kind, until it closes in January, because of a rent increase. It will replaced by a Saks Off 5th store. Read more...

11 Bookish Things To Add To Your Summer Bucket List by Alex Weiss

Spencer Platt/Getty Images News /Getty Images

Ever since I was a kid, writing up a summer bucket list has been a constant tradition. My past bucket lists have included silly things like attaining the phone number of my middle school crush or reading an insane number of books before school started back up. Bucket lists can include anything from embarking on road-trip adventures to facing a big fear that's been holding you back. It's anything you want, and if you're a book lover like myself, odds are you have a bucket list that contains a lot of books, too.

Spending your summer days with a good book and glass of lemonade is what dreams are made of — at least for book nerds. It's not so much about the tan or the temperature of the beach waves, but more so about the characters and settings within the books we hold close to our hearts. While you probably have a good number of books you're adding to your bucket list this year, consider adding a couple book-related activities to it as well. After all, you will need a little time in-between books that break your heart or blow your mind.

Gather your closest book loving friends and plan for one fantastic summer full of bookstores, arts and crafts, writing, and a whole lot of reading with these 11 fun things to add to your summer book bucket list:

1. Visit A New Or Your Favorite Bookstore Once A Week

 Read more...

8 GREAT NON-BOOKSTORE PLACES TO GET BOOKS by Susie Rodarme 03-29-16

I love me some indie bookstores. I do. Shout-out to The Strand in NYC, Quimby’s in Chicago, and the Village Bookshop right here in Columbus, which I thought was a religious bookstore for about eight years because it’s in an old church. (Oops.) But I didn’t name a blog Insatiable Booksluts because I am choosy about where I buy books; when it comes to book shopping, I take all comers. (Is that… does the booksluts reference make that a dirty pun?)

Here are some non-book stores where I often find myself browsing the book selection. (I’m not counting places like Amazon or Walmart or Target because they basically are online bookshops.)

image by Snowmangraham via Wikipedia

1. Record Stores. Not all record shops have a book selection, but some do, and some have great book selections. My favorite record store with books (way more records than books, so it really isn’t a bookstore) so far has been Shake It Records in Cincinnati; their curation is fantastic and they also carry Out of Print tees. Record store owners and managers tend to be on the hip side (sometimes the hipster side but to each his own), so there’s always the exciting possibility of finding lesser-known gems.  Read more...

Interview with a Bookstore: The Strand in New York City by ‘One summer there was this huge fight between a couple of employees that spilled out through the book carts on the sidewalk and onto Broadway. Middle of the afternoon, books scattered all in the street, everyone’s screaming’ ... Strand anecdotes. Photograph: All images courtesy of The StrandLiterary Hub Monday 21 March 2016 11.00 EDT

 ‘One summer there was this huge fight between a couple of employees that spilled out through the book carts on the sidewalk and onto Broadway. Middle of the afternoon, books scattered all in the street, everyone’s screaming’ ... Strand anecdotes. Photograph: All images courtesy of The Strand

The Strand was born in 1927 on Fourth Avenue on what was then called “Book Row.” Book Row covered six city blocks and housed 48 bookstores. Ben Bass, an entrepreneur at heart and a reader by nature, was all of 25 years old when he began his modest used bookstore with 300 dollars of his own and 300 dollars that he borrowed from a friend.

Ben sought to create a place where books would be loved, and book lovers could congregate. He named his bookstore after the London street where writers like Thackeray, Dickens, and Mill once gathered and interesting book publishers thrived. The Strand quickly became a Greenwich Village institution where writers went to converse, sell their books and find a hidden treasure to buy. Today, the Strand is the sole survivor of Book Row’s colorful past, boasting more than 18 miles of new, used, and rare books.

What’s your favorite section in the store?

The Rare Book Room is truly a magical place, and the dollar carts are heaven for any thrifty booklover, but my favorite would have to be the children’s department, especially the classic and vintage sections. I really love an old book with some character or with a heartfelt dedication from a bygone era. –Maya S, Kids Department Read more...

There’s A Village In Wales That Is Basically One Big Library

1. This is the Welsh village of Hay-on-Wye.

Visiting the oldest bookstore in America – and its resident ghost: The Moravian Book Shop in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is still thriving, some 270 years after its founding

 ‘We’ve created something here,’ says the Moravian book shop’s manager. ‘What you hear people say is we’re an experience.’ Photograph: Moravian Book Shop

On a recent Friday morning, I showed up to Moravian Book Shop a little before the store was to open. Moravian is the oldest bookstore in the United States, founded in 1745, and has expanded many times over the years, taking over neighboring buildings. It now occupies 15,000 square feet on Main Street in downtown Bethlehem, Pensylvania. I wasn’t sure where to go in. Such a large footprint means the store has a few front doors.

Lisa Girard quickly spotted me from inside, brought me in out of the wind blowing up from the Lehigh river, and began explaining just how a bookstore (a warm one, I might add) has managed to stay open for so long. Moravian even opened a second location in nearby Allentown last year. That’s an unusual longevity for a business in this corner of the country, where one of the world’s mightiest steel mills, Bethlehem Steel, couldn’t keep a business going long into the new century. Read more...

Indie Bookstores Are Back, With a Passion By FRANCIS X. CLINES FEB. 12, 2016

Stocking the shelves at Book Culture in New York City. CreditBrian Harkin for The New York Times

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• The decades of trauma suffered by independent neighborhood bookstores — damage from bargain megastores, the ascension of the e-book and Amazon’s flash delivery of cut-rate reading — hardly hindered Chris Doeblin’s search for the right place to open his fourth independent bookstore in Manhattan.
  In fact those serial threats across 30 years in the business drove his search for his next “indie” locale. “We are pushed from behind and driven ahead by the pull of the future,” Mr. Doeblin said last month, explaining why his three Book Culture stores are not enough. “I have 10-year-old kids. You have to reinvent yourself.” Read more...

Here’s how Amazon self-destructs - Salon.com

Here’s how Amazon self-destructs - Salon.com

If Amazon puts bookstores out of business, it will destroy the main way readers learn about new books to buy

By Evan Hughes

EnlargeJeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. (Credit: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton/SeanPavonePhoto via Shutterstock/Salon)

By the time a federal judge ruled last week that Apple had illegally colluded with five of the so-called Big Six publishers to raise e-book prices, just about no one in the book business was surprised. All the publishers named in the lawsuit had already taken a long look at the uphill battle and the crippling legal bills and decided to settle. (Unlike Apple, book publishers have less cash than the United States Treasury.) The ruling seemed to be just the latest uplifting story for Amazon, whose dominance Apple and the publishers had been trying to curtail until the Department of Justice stepped in.

lso last week, Amazon’s closest competitor in bookselling, Barnes & Noble, announced the resignation of its CEO, William Lynch, and said it would not name a successor, rarely a good sign. Already in a distant second place, Barnes & Noble has recently seen its woes deepen significantly. The company has been closing stores and announced in June that it would close still more and stop making Nook color tablets. It reported net losses of more than $1 million per day.

With challenges to Amazon’s power wilting fast, the company’s stock closed the week at an all-time high. It is not so obvious, however, that the Seattle behemoth is sitting pretty, at least when it comes to bookselling. Amazon could end up being victimized by its own phenomenal success.  Read more...