Bookstores

Crazy Wisdom Bookstore in Ann Arbor announced yesterday that they will either “be selling or closing” their doors come February 15, 2022, after 40 years in business. Owners Bill Zirinsky and Ruth Schekter, who are in their 60s, said that they are “ready to look out upon a new and different horizon.” Though many independent bookstores struggled financially during the pandemic, Zirinsky and Schekter were clear that this was not the case for Crazy Wisdom. “The bookstore had a very profitable year (due to having closed the tea room at the onset of the pandemic), and that’s not a bad […]

Kenny Brechner, owner of DDG Booksellers in Farmington, ME, resigned from the ABA board following a change in the organization’s free speech policy. Brechner asserted in ShelfTalker (his column for Publishers Weekly) that the ABA’s September change in its ends policies would “restrict its active support and defense of free expression.” Citing new language that pledges to ensure “members have the resources in support of their right to freedom of expression,” Brechner charges, “This nebulous statement undermined ABA’s long established role as a defender of free expression in the literary world. Pointedly it constricted ABFE’s [American Booksellers For Free Expression] […]

Rebecca Fitting, co-owner of Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, has sold her share to Jessica Stockton-Bagnulo, who is now the sole owner. The two founded the store in 2009. In an email letter, Fitting wrote: “Owning a small business has always been deeply rewarding, but also incredibly challenging, and running Greenlight while parenting through a pandemic has caused me to rethink my personal priorities. It’s been well chronicled in the media that the pandemic – the lack of access to childcare and the havoc this wreaked – has failed working parents, in particular working mothers, and I am a great example […]

Employees at Printed Matter, a nonprofit art book store in New York, joined the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 153. Management voluntarily recognized the union on October 18, and contract bargaining will begin soon. In an Instagram post, the union said, “We’re so excited about this big next step and are grateful that Printed Matter management has been cooperative and proud of our decision so far. “We see books and multiples as inherently non-hierarchical art forms, and this has shaped the collaborative and radical organizational history of Printed Matter. So many of the values Printed Matter represents within […]

Tattered Cover will open a store in downtown Colorado Springs in early 2022, aiming for between February 15 and March 15. Tattered Cover currently has five locations in and around Denver, as well as a pop up mall store, three airport stores, and another Denver-area location slated to open this fall. The 8,400-square-foot Colorado Springs space will be the store’s first location outside the Denver metro area. Its lease agreement “allows the retailer to make rent payments based on a percentage of its sales.”

The ABA is making changes to its by-laws and ends policies. Among those changes is a focus on their revised mission of serving bookstores in particular (including used bookstores). Current bylaws define eligible members as “any commercial establishment that is primarily engaged in the retail sale of new books,” which will be revised to, “businesses that primarily sell books, meaning more than 50 percent of their inventory must be in books and/or book media.” An adjustment in the ends policies reaches beyond store owners, who were the founding focus of the ABA, to include bookstore staff. The group now promises […]