Bookstores

The forthcoming issue of Vanity Fair features Bruce Handy chronicling the life of the late owner of Paris’s Shakespeare and Company bookstore, “the eccentric, irascible, and visionary George Whitman,” and looking at “Shakespeare’s greatest asset in the age of Amazon: Whitman’s daughter, Sylvia.” Downtown Greenville, SC will get a downtown bookstore, in a planned renovation of the Greenville County Family Court building. To be called M. Judson, already two years in the making with months more to go, the store is being created by local author Ashley Warlick, publisher of Edible Upcountry magazine Samantha Wallace, and owner of Booksmith in […]

The WSJ reports that Amazon is opening some kind of physical, operating presence — will it include or operate as a store? — on 34th in Midtown Manhattan, across from the Empire State Building. According to “people familiar with the plans,” the space “would function as a mini-warehouse, with limited inventory for same-day delivery within New York, product returns and exchanges, and pickups of online orders.” They add, less definitively, that “Amazon also may consider using the space to showcase inventory, particularly its devices like the Kindle e-readers, Fire smartphone or Fire TV set-top box.” The store is deemed an experiment. […]

Employees at Book Culture in Morningside Heights signed a three-year contract Wednesday night after a protracted summer-long fight over attempts to unionize that led to the dismissal of several employees, subsequently reversed. The NY Daily News reports the new deal includes higher wages, fixed raises and affordable health care. “Now everyone is super happy,” Cameron Addicott, one of five employees fired for casting pro-unionization votes (after which four were rehired) told the paper. “We’re able to get back to what we do best. There isn’t any worry in the work place. There’s that knowledge that you have that support.” The […]