New York: where are the bookstores?

[John F]

I was shocked to learn from this article that Barnes & Noble has closed its original flagship store on 5th Avenue. Rizzoli's bookstore on 57th Street is going too. Manhattan bookstores are closing left and right. I buy in bookstores whenever I can, if they have in stock what I'm interested in, but that's becoming harder; the only bookstore in the Lincoln Center area these days is the Juilliard School's. It's not because of amazon.com, it's the rents.


Literary City, Bookstore Desert
Surging Rents Force Booksellers From Manhattan
By JULIE BOSMAN
MARCH 25, 2014

When Sarah McNally, the owner of McNally Jackson bookstore in Lower Manhattan, set out to open a second location, she went to a neighborhood with a sterling literary reputation, the home turf of writers from Edgar Allan Poe to Nora Ephron: the Upper West Side. She was stopped by the skyscraper-high rents. “They were unsustainable,” Ms. McNally said. “Small spaces for $40,000 or more each month. It was so disheartening.”

Rising rents in Manhattan have forced out many retailers, from pizza joints to flower shops. But the rapidly escalating cost of doing business there is also driving out bookstores, threatening the city’s sense of self as the center of the literary universe, the home of the publishing industry and a place that lures and nurtures authors and avid readers.

“Sometimes I feel as if I’m working in a field that’s disappearing right under my feet,” said the biographer and historian Robert Caro, who is a lifelong New Yorker.

The Rizzoli Bookstore was recently told that it would be forced to leave its grand space on 57th Street because the owners decided that the building would be demolished.

The Bank Street Bookstore in Morningside Heights announced in December that it would not renew its lease when it expires in February 2015, saying that it had lost money for the last decade. Both stores are scrambling to find new locations. Independents like Coliseum Books, Shakespeare and Company on the Upper West Side, Endicott Booksellers and Murder Ink have all closed their doors.

In the past, those smaller stores were pushed out by superstores — a trend memorably depicted in the 1998 film “You’ve Got Mail” — leaving book lovers worried that someday, Manhattan would be dominated by chain bookstores. But now the chain stores are shutting down, too. Since 2007, five Barnes & Noble stores throughout Manhattan have closed, including its former flagship store on Fifth Avenue and 18th Street, which was shuttered in January. Five Borders stores in Manhattan were closed in 2011 when the chain went bankrupt, vacating huge spaces on Park Avenue, near Penn Station and in the Shops at Columbus Circle.

State data reveals that from 2000 to 2012, the number of bookstores in Manhattan fell almost 30 percent, to 106 stores from 150. Jobs, naturally, have suffered as well: Annual employment in bookstores has decreased 46 percent during that period, according to the state’s Department of Labor.

The American Booksellers Association, a trade group for independents, has 39 member stores in Manhattan, a number that includes museum shops and Hudson News locations in Penn Station, where magazines and bottled water are displayed far more prominently than books. (Some independent bookstores have found it easier to survive in Brooklyn, the borough already teeming with writers like Jennifer Egan and Martin Amis.)

The closings have alarmed preservationists, publishers and authors, who said the fading away of bookstores amounted to a crisis that called for intervention from the newly minted mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, who has vowed to offer greater support to small businesses.

Mr. Caro said in an interview that he is heartbroken by the loss of bookstores from Manhattan, calling it “a profoundly significant and depressing indication of where our culture is.” “How can Manhattan be a cultural or literary center of the world when the number of bookstores has become so insignificant?” he asked. “You really say, has nobody in city government ever considered this and what can be done about it?”

With the closing of several Barnes & Noble and Borders stores, it is difficult to shop for new books in Midtown, the same neighborhood that houses Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and much of Penguin Random House. “There are some great bookstores, but there aren’t a lot of them,” said Michael Pietsch, the chief executive of Hachette. “Compared to other cities, New York is no longer a bookstore city.”..

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/26/busin ... surge.html

[lennygoran]

John Sue does a lot of reading and likes to have a book in her hand--she has several friends now who keep pushing the Kindle on her--she's almost tempted--she doesn't buy books but uses the library. Regards, Len

[John F]

It's not so much about having the book in my hand after I buy it, but beforehand I want to browse to find out if it's well enough thought and written that I really want to have it. Not so much about saving money as not wasting time on it.

[jbuck919]

It's not so much about having the book in my hand after I buy it, but beforehand I want to browse to find out if it's well enough thought and written that I really want to have it. Not so much about saving money as not wasting time on it.

When I was in grad school I frequented the bookstore, which aside from the textbooks was paltry compared to what Borders became later, but one of the browsers I sometimes encountered was Harold Bloom in the poetry section (which caused me to move away in sheer intimidation). Yes, believe it or not, he would pick up a book of new poetry from a retail shelf and browse through it, then put it back, just like everyone else.

It is the browsing aspect that is key, but maybe that is something we are just going to have to give up. To a limited extent, one can browse a selection before buying it from Amazon or downloading it to a Kindle. Perhaps online booksellers will expand that capacity as they see that it increases sales. As much as I have loved great bookstores myself, I wonder what all those "other cities" are that still have them. (Patelson's and Tower Records are gone too; the music store and the recording store seem to be as obsolete as the bookstore.)

[John F]

The great bookstore cities I know are European capitals: London, Vienna, Berlin, Paris. In the US, I don't have statistics and have no idea of the quantity, but as for quality, San Francisco still has the City Lights Bookstore, while New York lost the Gotham Book Mart seven years ago.

[jbuck919]

The great bookstore cities I know are European capitals: London, Vienna, Berlin, Paris. In the US, I don't have statistics and have no idea of the quantity, but as for quality, San Francisco still has the City Lights Bookstore, while New York lost the Gotham Book Mart seven years ago.

Well I can tell youse all about Washington/Baltimore. I watched the bookstore scene dissolve in two different ways: First, all the branches of classic bookstores plus the old local boutiques disappeared, and then the big box stores appeared but eventually followed suit. I can't swear that there is not still one or more good bookstores left, but the picture in general mirrors what seems to be the US norm.

As for England, there was a vignette in my pre-teaching career that seems more like a dream now, but I was required to make a business trip to London. This was in association with a contract between my small employer and none other than Robert Maxwell. Incredibly, he had two set-ups, which required a day trip to (ta-ta-ta-TAH) Oxford. So once in my life I got to visit Blackwell's, though it was the music store I concentrated on. When I was in school, the way to get important scores such as the various Urtext editions was to write to Blackwell's and say "Send me this and enclose the bill," just as in 84, Charing Cross Road.

[John F]

Washington/Baltimore

When were they ever great bookstore cities? Sez the New York snob.

I once made a business trip for Norton to Oxford, but it was only from London - they reimbursed the train fare, but not my flight. Since we're dropping names, I was visiting Richard Ellmann, then working on the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry which was my first editing job, and I had no business with him that required the trip, it was just a courtesy visit to get acquainted so each of us would have a better sense of who we were working with. I stopped in at Blackwells too. Of course.

[Tarantella]

The great bookstore cities I know are European capitals: London, Vienna, Berlin, Paris. In the US, I don't have statistics and have no idea of the quantity, but as for quality, San Francisco still has the City Lights Bookstore, while New York lost the Gotham Book Mart seven years ago.

I can attest to the excellence of Shakespeare's English bookshop in Vienna!! I'm still regularly receiving emails about this or that writer visiting to discuss/sign copies of their latest book. It's an excellent shop and provided an oasis for this reader during a protracted stay in a German-speaking country. I'll be back, as Arnie said. (Now THAT'S irony!)

This morning I watched an interview with Martin Amis - he was in Australia recently for the Perth Writers' Festival. He described any significant novel as 'like looking through the bars of cage when you open the book's cover; you look into the eyes of the tiger, coming face to face with its strength and fearsome beauty - but you wouldn't necessarily want to have to confront it on the street".

When speaking like this Amis was referring to the portrayal in the novel of some of life's most cruel, dramatic and possibly evil moments - all of which are compressed into the novel and which have been created by the writer, usually through some kind of personal experience.

[John F]

Did you say you'll be moving to Vienna? Then you'll be a tram ride away from Musikhaus Doblinger, where I've spent more time and dollars (or Euros, or Schillings) than I'd care to admit. It's coming up on its 200th birthday, in 1816.

Here's a list of over 300 Viennese booksellers, not including Shakespeare & Company:

http://www.buchkultur.net/buchhandelsfu ... eSprachen=

[Tarantella]

Did you say you'll be moving to Vienna? Then you'll be a tram ride away from Musikhaus Doblinger, where I've spent more time and dollars (or Euros, or Schillings) than I'd care to admit. It's coming up on its 200th birthday, in 1816.

Here's a list of over 300 Viennese booksellers, not including Shakespeare & Company:

http://www.buchkultur.net/buchhandelsfu ... eSprachen=

We're returning to Vienna later this year for another year-long stay. I'm sure I did go to that famous book/music seller in the Innere Stadt, Doblinger, where I purchased the first of the excellent Walker biographical trilogy on "Liszt" for my husband.

Thanks for the list of bookshops, but I don't read German so would need English only. There's also another English bookshop near Schwarzenberg Platz, but it isn't nearly as good as Shakespeare & Company.

Anecdote: one day my husband and I went on a round river trip - up the canal, through the Donau and back into the canal at Dobling. We were sitting opposite a rather elegant, English-speaking woman and her friend. After further conversation we learned she was a recently retired Curator from the Albertina Museum. She spoke about having accompanied exhibitions to New York in more recent years, and she mentioned other international research projects and destinations. The woman was originally from Greece and she spoke about returning there for family visits only to be assailed by her brother who told her, in no uncertain terms, of his opinion of many great artworks!!! I need hardly tell you that these were not "critical" opinions!!!

[John F]

One of the books on that list, ÖBV Buchhandlung on Schwarzenbergstraße (not near Schwarzenbergplatz), carries books in English and many other languages, but I don't remember whether their stock is large enough to be worth a visit. (I haven't stayed in Vienna long enough to need to buy English language books there.) There's another English language place in the Innenstadt called Pickwick's that bills itself as an "International Cafe-Bar, Videostore and Bookstore"; I half-remember looking in there and finding not many books, it's more a pub. Still:

http://www.pickwicks.at/