America’s browsing history

Early in his new book, The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore, Evan Friss notes that, in 1958, Americans bought roughly 72 percent of their books from “small, single store, personal bookshops.” As recently as 1993, 13,499 independently run bookshops were open across the country. As of 2021, however, only 5,591 indie shops still remained and the vast majority of books were purchased from Amazon or via discount racks at Target and Costco. As he puts it, “if bookstores were animals, they’d be on the list of endangered species.” How did this happen? The Bookshop attempts to tell that story.

We tend to view the plight of the indie bookshop as a contemporary issue, but Friss notes Americans have never really been readers. In fact, a 1920s study of Muncie, Ind., revealed that 76 percent of working-class families “bought no books apart from those required for school.” And a 1930 study found that families in Detroit spent just 20 cents on books compared with more than $5.50 on movies.

Yet our cultural history is littered with the (sometimes quite successful) attempts of myriad bibliophiles to create “third spaces … [that] function as critical sites of intellectual, social, political, and cultural exchange.”

The Bookshop tells the story of a few. Some of the shops Friss talks about are quite famous—like the Strand, the Gotham Book Mart, and, of course, Barnes & Noble, which helped shape New York into the bookshop capital of America. Others are infamous, like the Aryan Bookstore, a pro-Nazi shop in Los Angeles that spreads the vitriol of anti-Semitism. Some shops were activist in nature, like the Oscar Wilde, a prominent pro-LGBT shop, and the Drum and Spear, born out of the Black Consciousness Movement, each of which gets a lengthy chapter. Others were chiefly commercial enterprises, like the once-influential book floor of Chicago’s Marshall Field and Co. Some were run by legendary figures like Benjamin Franklin while some were just tables set up on sidewalks. And, of course, you can’t tell the story of the American bookshop without casting a few stones at Amazon’s strangely misguided attempt to open its own retail space in the mid-2010s.

As a professor of history at James Madison University, Friss’ professional preoccupations are related to urban America, so it’s no surprise that he focuses extensively on bookshops located in our largest metropolitan areas. On the one hand, this makes sense given the sheer volume of historic shops located in New York and Boston, but the approach does limit the degree to which he can provide a truly comprehensive history of the American bookshop. Nonetheless, his book is packed with details that will delight bibliophiles who care about the future of the industry (example: Thomas Jefferson once bought a “sumptuous” history of Italy from a bookseller in Williamsburg, Va., that would have been worth the same as fourteen hogs) and who want to see it flourish.

If that’s to happen, Friss concludes, readers will have to buy in—and shell out.

The work of selling books in America has always been an uphill battle, marked by an ever-shrinking market, ever-tighter margins, and a product whose price point has not adjusted with inflation.

It’s easy for book lovers (and yes, booksellers like me) to romanticize their favorite shops. After all, “bookstores influence our tastes, our thoughts, and our politics … they offer serendipity” and “stimulate our senses.” To some degree, Friss does, indeed, get romantic about his subject. But the truth is, so long as there are books to read, browse, smell, discuss, and love, there will always be a need for places to do that alongside other bibliophiles.

How can you not be romantic about that?

—David Kern owns Goldberry Books in Concord, N.C., and is the co-host of Close Reads and Withywindle, two bookish podcasts