Booksellers Fight Back As 5 New Stores Open

It seems like every few weeks another venerated New York bookstore waves the white flag: Coliseum Books, near Bryant Park, filed for bankruptcy in September and closed its doors January 6, after 32 years. Murder Ink, on the Upper West Side, finally met its maker in December, after 34 years. And now the Gotham Book Mart, on East 46th Street, faces eviction. Publishers Weekly recently reported that New York ranked dead last nationally in “bookselling stores per resident.” The state has just one store for every 43,000 residents.Yet while closings get attention, bookstores are opening, too. In the last several months, owners have cut ribbons on five new independent bookstores across the city. Taschen, the German publisher of art books, has opened its first New York outlet, in SoHo. The New York-based powerHouse Books, a publisher of photography books, has opened a capacious store in DUMBO. Jazz at Lincoln Center has transformed its gift shop into an authoritative source for jazz books and recordings. And two small neighborhood shops, the Park Ave. Corner Shop and Adam’s Books, have landed on the Upper East Side and in Park Slope. Taken together, these nascent stores suggest that, even in an era of ever expanding conglomerates and one-click Internet shopping, where used books frequently cost less than their postage, independent and niche bookstores just might remain relevant.Benedikt Taschen’s company, founded in 1980 as a comic book store in Cologne, has grown into a glitzy publisher of books on art, architecture, film, photography, sex, and pop culture. Taschen books are often oversized and conspicuously luxurious, filled with visually arresting photography or shocking artwork.At tables or lecterns, Taschen customers can browse selections ranging from the “Basic Art Series” —small paperbacks, priced at $9.99, that introduce readers to individual artists — to the $12,500 “GOAT: A Tribute to Muhammad Ali,” a tome that weighs 75 pounds and is sold as part of a Jeff Koons sculpture. (GOAT is an acronym for “Greatest of All Time.”) The Koons piece is a bizarre amalgamation of a bar stool, a rubber tire, and an inflatable dolphin pool toy. “Yeah, I’m not entirely sure what it means,” the store’s 26-year-old manager, Matthew Ricke, said. “Like any great contemporary artist, Koons didn’t explain it.” (The book, sans sculpture, sells for $4,000.)In 1995, Daniel Power began powerHouse Books, which publishes high-end photography books, often with a touch of product placement. Along with collections by respected photographers, such as Larry Fink and Joseph Rodriguez, powerHouse has published a book about jeans that features a back-cover ad from the Gap, and a book about weddings with an ad from De Beers.Last spring, when the publisher lost the lease on its previous, much smaller location in Hudson Square, Mr. Power, 44, saw it as an opportunity to stretch the limits of his company. “It inspired us to think on different levels,” he said. The new space, in DUMBO, just off the East River, was coined the powerHouse Arena. Open since October, it boasts 10,000 square feet, with 25-foot ceilings and windows galore. It will serve as both a bookstore and a multipurpose event space, accommodating 500 people for art exhibits, dance performances, and film screenings. The company has also recently started an eponymous magazine, and is considering adding a bar to the store. “I want to make it a culture space, a destination,” Mr. Power said. “The new building has the ‘wow’ factor.”The store is currently promoting “Disco Years,” a 200-page photo book by Ron Galella that chronicles the 1970s New York club scene. Shoppers can purchase the book, for $65, as well as any of the dozens of photographs from the era, which are displayed on the store’s walls. A 1977 black-andwhite shot of Studio 54 by Mr. Fink goes for $3,000.A very different bookstore can be found on Columbus Circle. Jazz at Lincoln Center’s new gift shop is tiny, more an alcove than a room, and keeps irregular hours. But the store doesn’t aim to be either predictable or comprehensive. “I would candidly say that we don’t have as much goodies as the public wants,” the 55-year-old curator of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Phil Schaap, said. “But if a book or record is in the store, it’s endorsed by myself, by my staff, by Wynton Marsalis, and by Jazz at Lincoln Center.”Mr. Schaap is a respected jazz historian. “I didn’t study Count Basie with some professor,” he said. “I studied Count Basie with Count Basie.” In addition to directing Swing U., an education arm of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Mr. Schaap has transformed a moribund gift shop, hawking the requisite T-shirts and mugs, into a fount of jazz expertise.The Jazz at Lincoln Center shop prides itself on the quality of its selections. Whereas a search on Amazon for books about John Coltrane returns more than 3,000 results, Mr. Schaap’s shop sells only “John Coltrane: His Life and Music,” by Lewis Porter, a Rutgers professor. “By carrying the Lewis Porter book and not carrying the others,” Mr. Schaap explained, “we’re saying that we’ve reviewed the evidence for you, and this is the book.” The store, he said, “mirrors what you see at my desk.”Mr. Schaap brings the same erudition to selling records. When a customer recently asked for “the Charles Mingus Christmas CD,” Mr. Schaap explained that the bass player never actually produced one. What some think is a holiday album is merely a single recording of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” So Mr. Schaap recommended two other Mingus records. “I think it’s much more important to have Mingus Dynasty or Mingus Moods,” he said. Mr. Schaap or a member of his staff will also track down a rare book or forgotten record, for a small finder’s fee. “We’ve been charging $15 to $25 an hour,” he said.Another small, independent store, the Park Ave. Corner Shop, opened on the Upper East Side in early December and sells a wide variety of used books. The shop has received some notice, largely because it dared to make a go in a neighborhood that has lost two independent bookstores in the last decade. The owner, Jason Wachtelhausen, is originally from Philadelphia, but has lived everywhere from Toronto to Guatemala. His latest venture, tucked amid stately apartment buildings, seems to have begun inauspiciously. There is no Web site or listed phone number, hours are not posted, and visitors often find the store closed. A “For Sale” sign hangs on the side of the building. But, with a thicket of used books visible inside (biographies of Louis Pasteur and Tallulah Bankhead sit on a shelf up front), Mr. Wachtelhausen could, with luck, succeed where others haven’t.Adam Tobin, the 32-year-old owner of Adam’s Books in North Park Slope, opened his store last June, after finishing an MFA in poetry at Brown University. When asked why, Mr. Tobin shrugged. “Doesn’t everyone want to have a bookstore?” he said. The store is small and inviting. He and his girlfriend are its only employees (“Yes, I pay her,” Mr. Tobin said). Bluegrass music plays from a boom box in the rear. The bookcases, built and stained by Mr. Tobin himself — “I’m not exactly a carpenter,” he said, “but they haven’t fallen down yet.” — are crammed with a heterogeneous collection of new and used books. A sign near the front of the store reads, “Please do not steal the books. Thank you.” Mr. Tobin wants to offer books that aren’t necessarily carried by chain stores like Barnes and Noble. He hopes to emphasize poetry, as well as independent and university presses. His store highlights the nonprofit Ugly Duckling Presse, based in Red Hook, which has published translations of Russian poetry.Mr. Tobin’s shelving is sometimes eccentric. Near the back of the store is a section called “Utopia.” “I’m very fond of my Utopia section,” he said. Customers seeking a state of perfection can choose between the likes of “Busted! Drug War Survival Skills” and “The Encyclopedia of Mistresses.” (If you think a spiritual teacher may help you reach Utopia, head to “How-To” and grab a copy of “How to Choose a Guru.”) Mr. Tobin has also devised a convoluted pricing structure, whereby, as the retail value of a book increases, so does the discount. “I’m not really trying to get rich doing this,” he said. “A lot of people don’t buy hardcover books because they’re too expensive. I mean, $35 is absurd for a new book.”Mr. Tobin and his bibliophilic comrades embody the kind of pluck that has always characterized New York’s love affair with bookshops. The siren call of the megastore and its feisty cousin, the Internet, is formidable, but in a city of 8 million, surely there’s room for a few mavericks.Mr. Peed is on the editorial staff of the New Yorker.

Booksellers Fight Back As 5 New Stores Open

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