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In Praise of Good Bookstores by Jeff Deutsch

Deutsch, director of Chicago’s Seminary Co-op Bookstores, offers an eloquent and inspiring paean to the community bookstore … A deeply read and engaging guide, Deutsch presents the bookstore as “a necessary part of the habitat of a lively intelligence in touch with the world” and observes that a good bookstore must not only understand the many needs of its customers but must also provide the conditions for discovery. Read more

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Remembrance of Bookstores Past

New York City is home to wonderful bookstores, but there used to be so many more of them to choose from — from Coliseum Books, just south of Columbus Circle; to Ivy’s Curiosities and Murder Ink on the Upper West Side; to the dearly departed St. Mark’s Bookshop in the East Village. By one count, there were 386 booksellers in Manhattan in 1950, including almost 40 on a six-block stretch of Fourth Avenue. (By comparison, there are fewer than 100 in the city now.) Here’s a look back at a few old favorites. Read more

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Why used books make the best travel souvenirs

Stores that sell new books are pretty, clean and sell great swag. I love them. I take pictures of them. I spend eagerly on their tomes and tote bags … But for me, the true treasures are buried in the funky, sometimes-musty secondhand shops, where a great find is like kismet. Read more

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Good Riddance to Amazon’s Terrible Bookstores

Amazon Books was always awkwardly situated between the company’s pitiless approach to commerce—its all-consuming need to be a “disruptor” in everything that it does—and the necessities of old-fashioned retailing, particularly bookstores. It was also simultaneously a P.R. stunt—an attempt to put a human face on the grim smiley face that adorns the company’s boxes—and a weird experiment, an attempt to use physical retail stores to mine data about how customers shop in person. No one ever asked for it, the strategy never worked particularly well, and now the company is doing what it does with its many failed experiments: quickly washing its hands and moving on to the next attempt to gain market share. Read more

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Pandemic sparks union activity where it was rare: Bookstores

Labor action has surged in many industries over the past two years, including in bookselling, a business where unions had been rare. Since 2020, employees have unionized or are attempting to do so everywhere from Printed Matter in New York City to Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle and Bookshop Santa Cruz in California. In Minnesota, workers at four Half Price Books stores have announced plans to affiliate with locals of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Read more