The Revenge of Analog by David Sax

Author:David Sax [Sax, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781610395724
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2016-09-13T07:00:00+00:00

The new bookstores in New York and elsewhere view themselves in the same light, which is why they all refuse to match Amazon’s unbeatable prices. “You can’t compete with Amazon,” said Christine Onorati, who opened WORD in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in 2007, and a second location in New Jersey in 2013. “If we look at it that way, we’ll lose every time. We can’t compete on price or delivery. We have to be a totally different option.” Instead, WORD competes with its selection (quality rather than quantity), personal service, events (especially school book fairs), and most important, a sense of desire, not just for the books WORD sells, but for shopping in the presence of likeminded people. “I don’t want anyone to think of me as a charity,” Onorati said. “No one should think they have to shop at my store, I want them to want to shop at my store.”

Book Culture’s Chris Doeblin was unambiguous about what he wanted to achieve when he opened his third and flagship location on the Upper West Side in December 2014. Doeblin is in his late forties, stands over six feet tall, and dresses in the worn corduroys and thick knit sweaters of a New England fisherman. When we first met he had a pencil behind each ear, and was directing the newly hired staff shelving books. Although he speaks with a soft voice, Doeblin’s words are filled with a purpose and also a righteous anger.

“Today, nobody sees books,” Doeblin said. “All the stores around here are closed. You take a major reading city like New York and take books away from the landscape—POOF!—they go away.” This mattered, because New York was the world’s literary capital, and many of the publishing industry’s editors and executives lived in the neighborhood. These people needed a place that proved the continued worth of their profession, which had been dragged through the mud in the public consciousness. They needed to see books lovingly displayed in windows, and a place where book lovers could gather and buy books in each other’s presence. They needed a place for children to discover books, and for parents to read to them and buy them books. A city without a bookshop to take your kids to was a horror to Doeblin. “We’re doing something seriously good,” he said. “We know this. That books do ultimate good. That’s an idea I can sell.”

Doeblin had worked in a number of independent bookstores around New York in the 1980s, and opened Book Culture up near Columbia University in 1997, focusing on textbooks. In 2009, he opened a smaller second location two blocks away (with a more commercial focus), and in 2010, brought in the store’s manager, Annie Hedrick, as Book Culture’s co-owner. Hedrick is more than ten years Doeblin’s junior, talks incredibly fast, and every time I visited the store, her one-year-old son was strapped to her body. Although the second Book Culture location cost $300,000 to open, it quickly achieved annual double-digit growth, and soon surpassed its initial investment.

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