Some of the stores mentioned in this podcast are:

(Winnetka, IL)
(Milwaukee, WI)
(Chicago, IL)
(St. Paul, MN)
(Ann Arbor, MI)
(Minneapolis, MN)
(St. Paul, MN)
(Madison, WI)
(Grand Rapids, MI)

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On Saturday, May 2nd at 11am, participants will meet at Three Lives (154 W. 10th at Waverly Place) and go from there to Housing Works, McNally Jackson, Bluestockings, Book Court, and Freebird Books & Goods.

According to the post, this tour will last between three and four hours, and will cover about 4.5 miles. You don’t need to RSVP to participate, but if you e-mail themillionsbookstoretour at gmail dot com, they’ll be able to alert you if there are any changes, or if the tour is rained out.

The two categories that I’m most interested in are the Indie Buzz Book for works of fiction and the Best Author Discovery for best debut. Here are your finalists:

Best Indie Buzz Book (Fiction)

• by David Benioff (Viking)
• by Dennis Lehane (Morrow)
• by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows (Dial)
• by Joseph O’Neill (Pantheon)
• by Geraldine Brooks (Viking)
• by Jhumpa Lahiri (Knopf)

Best Author Discovery (Debut)

• by Tom Rob Smith (Grand Central)
• by Stieg Larsson (Knopf)
• by Hillary Jordan (Algonquin)
• by David Wroblewski (Ecco)
• by Stefan Merrill Block (Random House)
• by Aravind Adiga (Free Press)

We’re big fans of independent bookstores (all the above links go to the Harvard Book Store, which we’ve decided to support this month), and I think it’s great that there’s a set of book awards given out by independent booksellers. This isn’t exactly the indie list I was hoping for (I like my bookseller reading tastes to be more eclectic, less corporate), but at least there’s one translation: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which was translated from the Swedish by Reg Keeland.

Cody’s was always one of Dalkey’s greatest accounts (and probably would’ve been for Open Letter had they been around when we started selling our books), in part because of a bookseller name Brian who worked at the 4th Street store. Brian was a huge fan, especially of Nicholas Mosley and Julian Rios’s Larva. At the start of a season, he would order 50+ copies of Hopeful Monsters and just through handselling, would sell out before the next catalog came out. I remember when the paperback of Larva came out, he outsold both Borders and Barnes & Noble single-handedly. He was also pretty adverse to returns, instead putting “to-be-returned” books on the front counter and pushing those until the stack was gone. (I have no idea what happened to Brian though . . .)

Anyway, enough reminiscing, this article is about how even the most popular, most well-known independents are two fuck ups away from bankruptcy. There’s really nothing else to add to Perman’s article. If you’re interested in the business of bookselling it’s a “must read.” Here are a few parts I found interesting starting after Andy Ross bought the store in 1977:

Throughout the 1980s the store prospered. It is a period that Ross, in retrospect, calls the Golden Age of independent bookstores — before chain mega-stores and discount warehouses, before the Internet and Amazon. Notable writers, from Alice Walker to Joseph Heller, made store appearances. “On a normal Saturday in 1989, we would do $25,000,” says Ross. Ninety percent of the books sold were part of the store’s extensive backlist. According to Ross, Cody’s sold 10% of the country’s copies of Walter Benjamin’s Illuminations.

Then along came the big box stores and Amazon . . .

Looking back, Ross says he was determined to turn a blind eye to some of the harsh realities unfolding all around him. “Amazon had a very good service,” he says. “But we didn’t want to admit it. We still had the experience of going to a bookstore, and we were a community center. We had author events every night, but the competition was stiff.”

The writing was on the wall. Customers came into the store to browse, but increasingly they went home and purchased their books online — at a discount. [Ed. Note: And without paying sales tax.]

By the early 2000s, Ross says he was losing $300,000 a year. By about 2005, losses had increased to $500,000, and profits were marginal. However, his payroll and overhead costs continued to go up.

Ignoring Amazon’s impact on the trade is mistake #1, and here’s the second:

In 2005, Ross opened a third store, in San Francisco, a decision that he hoped would pull Cody’s out of its hole. Looking back, it may have also been his fatal mistake, he says. Ross dug into his savings and plowed $1.5 million into a 22,000-sq.-ft. location in the heavily trafficked Union Square. “We thought we would expand ourselves to profitability,” he says. “All the factors were in place. It was a great location. We got a great deal per square foot: We had information about how much money per square foot you could make.” There was, however, another factor that Ross says he ignored at the time: “Nobody was buying books.”

Shortly thereafter, Ross sold the store to Hiroshi Kagawa of the Japanese firm IBC Publishing, who kept Ross on as a manager. Not that things were getting better:

Compounding problems, Ross says that Cody’s was being squeezed by creditors and stock was running low. There were even fewer books to sell to customers. Sales slipped further. On a good Saturday, Cody’s rang up only $9,000 in sales. Revenues were down two-thirds from their high point 17 years earlier. Ironically, Ross says, as things continued to get worse, Cody’s actually had gotten better at doing business. “We were reaching out to libraries and book fairs and other events, but it wasn’t enough.” Revenues were down to about $2.5 million (compared with the late 1980s, when there was only one store and Cody’s brought in $8 million), and profitability continued to slide. Ross says the costs became unsustainable.

And in June 2008,

The film, which will run on PBS stations starting in November, begins with the opening of Kepler’s near Stanford University in 1955, documents Andy Ross’s purchase of Cody’s in 1977 and follows the impact of the Internet age of the late 1990s. It ends with the closing of Cody’s San Francisco location and a depiction of Kepler’s ongoing struggles to remain open.

In producing this, filmmaker Alex Beckstead came up with four survival principles for bookstores:

1. Own your own building.

2. Hire experienced staff.

3. Sell used books.

4. Figure out some way to sell books online.

I wonder if other booksellers would agree with these . . . The first sounds like a no-brainer, and is one of the causes for so many New York bookstores going under over the past few years. (Such as Lenox Hill, Coliseum, Gotham, etc., etc.)

It’s sort of sadly ironic to post this today though, after reading this item in

Cody’s Books, the one-time iconic Berkeley, Calif. bookstore that has fallen on hard times in recent years, has closed. In an e-mail sent late Friday, Cody’s management said the store “will shut its doors effective June 20.”

According to its sparse Idlewild is

a beautiful new store and event space near Union Square, is New York City’s only bookshop specializing in travel and international literature.

A bookstore organized by country rather than genre, Idlewild carries fiction and non-fiction from all parts of the world, including new and classic works in translation, travel guides, books about politics and culture, graphic lit, language-learning books, maps and more. Idlewild also carries a wide variety of travel accessories, cards and gifts — making the store a one-stop shop for travellers or people shopping for a gift.

Sounds very promising, but if you’re talking international bookstores in NY, one shouldn’t forget McNally Robinson, which organizes its fiction section by region. (Something that I did at Quail Ridge Books when I worked there, back, um, a while ago . . . It actually boosted sales for international fiction enormously, and although I understand the arguments for how this shelving system could ghettoize translations, there’s something appealing to me about being able to look through 50 Japanese books on one shelf rather than scanning through a section and only picking out the 5-10 that jump out at me.)

Last night, Chris Doeblin sent out an email announcing that the bookstore he co-founded on the outskirts of Columbia University in 1996 is changing its name from Labyrinth Books to Book Culture.

As long as it’s not closing its doors, they can call the store whatever they want in my opinion. is quite a store, with one of the most comprehensive fiction sections in all of NY. Book Culture doesn’t have much of a ring to it though . . . kind of like naming a press “Book Publisher.”

With stores in Saskatoon, Calgary and Manhattan, McNally Robinson, named bookstore of the year a record five times by the Canadian Booksellers Association, has become one of Canada’s largest independent book chains. It has doubled its $30-million revenue since 2000 and will grow again in 2008, adding two new stores, including its first in Ontario, in the Toronto suburb of Don Mills. Two months ago, the Times of London’s literary editor, Erica Wagner, named McNally Robinson as her favourite bookstore in New York City on the Charlie Rose show, drawing a knowing nod from the esteemed PBS host.

I’ve personally never been to the Canadian stores, but is one of my favorite bookstores in the world. The look, the feel, the selection, and the all-star staff are all amazing.

To me, the most interesting part of this article is the story of the flagship store’s origins:

In 1995, a publisher friend warned Paul of the mega-chains steamrolling across the U.S. The McNallys hired a babysitter, hopped in the car and drove to Minneapolis-St.Paul — which had absorbed seven superstores in the previous year. They visited every bookstore in the Twin Cities. “The independents were just gasping for oxygen,” says Paul, 60, whose manicured salt-and-pepper beard and chic blue runners give him the air of an architect. But people streamed into Borders at 10 p.m. On the darkened U.S. I-29, driving home, the McNallys made the bold decision to shutter two of their highly profitable small stores, take on an enormous loan, and reinvent. Up against Goliath, they would fight superstore with superstore. As Winnipeg icons like Mary Scorer Books and Heaven and Art Book Cafe fell, McNally redux became an instant hit.