Book Review: The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore

Spoiler alert: I love books and bookstores, er, uh, bookshops.

Bookshops are quite literally the window into the soul of any avid reader, which is what makes them magical. It’s not surprising, then, that Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and Facebook proliferate with august, quaint images of bookstores with towering books and cozy nooks, nor that readers sometimes whimsically claim the dream of wanting to own a bookshop, despite the inherent difficulty of selling books. In his 2024 book, The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore, Evan Friss taps into the nostalgic whimsy, and indeed, magic, of the bookshop while also evincing the real-world challenges bookshops have faced since the beginning of the American republic.

Benjamin Franklin was at the forefront of starting a bookshop — bookshop is important, as Friss came to learn, because bookshop sellers find “bookstore” too dirty for what they’re doing: offering magic! — even before the American Revolution (as well as being a printing press unto himself). Indeed, though, the very first bookshops, like Franklin’s, fomented that very Revolution by seeding the thoughts of independence in the minds of the colonists with books and pamphlets like Thomas Paine’s seminal Common Sense. As such, bookshops have always been a brick-and-mortar representation and reflection of political movements and radicalism throughout American history, from Common Sense to Tropic of Cancer to offshoot speciality bookshops agitating for equality, capitalizing on the success of Stonewall (and indeed, having helped foment that, too), and defying the gag-inducing New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.

But even from the beginning with Franklin and others, such as Ebenezer Larkin’s bookstore, which has the distinction of being the first known image of a bookstore in America, 1789 in Boston, bookshops have had to be multifaceted, selling what are known as “sideline” items: higher margin non-book merchandise. Think of a Barnes & Noble with candles, music, games, toys, gifts, and yes, even Starbucks counts (they sell so many cookies!). Larkin’s equivalent was stationary supplies and a basket of quills. I also gotta think that’s the reason bookstores, like Waldenbooks, which also featured many sidelines, parked themselves within, what is now a quaint concept, malls. Foot traffic! Ah, I have fond memories of making a beeline for Waldenbooks whenever I entered the mall. Even among malls still thriving near me, there are no bookstores, or uh, bookshops, within them. It’s also worth remembering, though, even when looking at the quite neat photo included of Larkin’s bookstore, as Friss notes, people in that time would have been stinky, owing to how expensive soap was and such. That cuts across the mental image of bookshop magic!

In 1958, Friss notes, Americans purchased about 72 percent of their books from small, single-store bookshops; in 1993, the U.S. Census counted 13,499 bookstores (which includes the big ones, and any store that counts 50 percent of its revenue from books), or one bookstore for every 19,253 people. By 2021, though, that number dwindled to 5,591 bookstores, or one for every 59,283 people. Of course, the biggest bookseller isn’t even a bookstore, although they had a short-lived experiment with actual brick-and-mortar stores, Amazon. Despite the hard economic reality of selling books, independent bookshops, or as it became fashionable in the early 2000s to call them, indies, have thrived for a while in America.

The American Booksellers Association (ABA), the nonprofit national trade association that advocates for the indies, and the oft-quoted in the book, Allison Hill, its CEO, primarily castigate Amazon as the reason for the decline and/or the inability for indies to survive and thrive (until 2023, at least, when the Federal Trade Commission and 19 other states sued Amazon.com for violating federal and state antitrust laws, something the ABA supported). But also, as Friss demonstrates throughout the book, booksellers, including the ABA, have been worried about competition from the beginning. They worried about public libraries, you know, given books were being offered for free, and book clubs (yes, book clubs!), as well as the spread of book mail orders, particularly to states that still didn’t have a bookstore. In 1929, Arkansas, Delaware, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming didn’t have a single bookshop. Imagine being in a state where there’s not one bookstore anywhere within its boundaries! Booksellers bemoaned after WWII that books were no longer luxury items for the high-end clientele, particularly due to the ascent of mass market paperbacks (fun fact from Friss: books were wrapped long before bags were introduced), and the three big discount chains that all started in 1962: Kmart, Target, and Walmart. What a year. Those places, of course, sold many things, books just happened to be one of their items. The ABA and its members were even against sidewalk booksellers for encroaching on their business, so to speak. Police routinely raided such establishments, taking their books, and then a new law explicitly went against them in the 1990s. Then, there’s radio, movie theaters (which even before the ubiquity of television, Americans were spending considerably more on than on books), television (Barnes & Noble did the first bookstore commercial on television in 1974 because previously, booksellers considered television the enemy), the superstore chains, like Borders, Books-A-Million, and Barnes & Noble, and of course, the internet with sites like eBay killing the antiquarian brick-and-mortar stores, and Amazon, along with eBooks, like Amazon’s Kindle. There is also the consistent two-fold fear that goes back to even 1915, if not longer (much longer!) Friss points out: old-timers fretting that there are no good modern authors and books anymore, and besides, people aren’t reading as much as they used to. Sure, as Friss notes, the average American consumer only spends $30 a year on books, and I imagine the timeframe is the same as its been for more than half a century, concentrated during the holiday season in December, but I’d also a venture a guess that ardent book-lovers help to make up much of that “average” difference. Additionally, heavy-hitters who sell widely with the general public must surely help, like a James Patterson or a Stephen King, or these days, more likely, a Colleen Hoover or a Freida McFadden. In fact, the average in 2022, while down from 2021, at $34.55 a year, was the highest since the last great peak, 2012’s average of $41.8. In other words, take someone like me, who reads north of 100 books a year, a good chunk I’ve bought outright new or used even within the calendar year or previous years, and multiple me by even a percentage of Americans who read, and that’s basically compensating for the lag of the average American in the book market.

To put a bow on the prior paragraph. I don’t begrudge the ABA agitating against all manner of competition to independent booksellers throughout the years — that is their job as a trade organization! Even to agitate for government protection, which I vehemently disagree with in either direction. What is clearly evident is that, no matter the number of indies, indies still have a place despite all manner of competition over the past 100-plus years, including what still seems to them like the existential threat of Amazon. (Fun fact that Friss devoted part of his Amazon chapter to. There was a bookstore in the 1970s for feminists called Amazon; it actually lasted until 2012.) That said, when called for, Friss had some acerbic dry humor about the demise of indies. At the end of his chapter on The Old Corner, a Boston bookstore that traced its roots to 1828 and if I recalled correctly, pioneered the concept of browsing through a bookstore, and notably, where its co-owners published The Atlantic Monthly, now known as The Atlantic, Friss says, “The Old Corner helped launch American literature and the American bookstore. Now it’s a Chipotle.” But to me, even that is such an American story. Everything is fluid and dynamic in the American economy. What once seems like a behemoth could be a Chipotle tomorrow. Or in one example from Friss’ book, the A&P grocery store chain had 16,000 locations in the 1920s; 100 years later, what was once dubbed an “American icon,” most have likely never heard of before. For the record, 16,000 is considerably more than Walmart today (4,717) or Kroger (2,700).

No book about American history, including a book about the American history of bookstores, can overlook the regional divide in the 19th century between the North and the South. It manifested even in bookselling, where at the time, most of the booksellers were concentrated in the Northeast. The South didn’t sell books well, and indeed, preferred English authors over American authors, leaning heavily into their plantation class image. As a resident of Cincinnati (well, its suburbs), I did enjoy this fact from Friss. In 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, Cincinnati was considered the bookstore capital of the “West” with 50 bookstores. By my count, there is 16 in Cincinnati today, who are least ABA members and have Cincinnati as an explicit address.

I’m grateful to Friss’ book for also bringing to my attention Marcella Hahner and Frances Steloff, two women I think whose lives would make for fascinating films. Hahner ran the book department at Marshall Field & Company, and to say she was a mover and shaker within a still male-dominated industry like the book industry would be an understatement. She set the terms for literary success. Steloff owned Gotham Book Mart and was constantly accosted, and defying, the aforementioned New York Society for the Suppression of Vice due to the books she sold, like the also aforementioned Tropic of Cancer. Funny enough, Steloff was notoriously stubborn about who she allowed to work with her and if they could maintain employment. For a spell, authors Allen Ginsberg and Tennessee Williams worked at Gotham, the latter fired by Steloff. This is also a good time to mention how important immigrants are to the flourishing of America, and in this particular case, its literary success. We need immigrants.

Friss could have written an entire book just about the interesting story arc for Barnes & Noble from villain to underdog hero, which I didn’t know started way back in the 1870s and for the longest time, their speciality seemed to be college textbooks. Barnes & Noble, once their locations and superstores proliferated more in the late 20th century, were seen as the enemy by the ABA and indies. Cold and detached compared to indie bookshops that could offer book recommendations and be a hub of the community, and as we’ve seen, a direct political actor within the community. (Which is interesting since its then-owner, Len Riggio, who turned a $1.2 million purchase into a company generating $3.48 billion in retail sales 43 years later, sought to make it more homey and welcoming. Again, that is a beautiful American story, too! Riggio, who Friss was fortunate enough to interview for the book, died only three weeks after its publication.) In the early 1990s, Barnes & Noble, along with competitor, Borders, were the Hahner and Steloff of their day. Publishers knew Barnes & Noble and Borders are where their books would be successful. Barnes & Noble actually had veto power, as it were, over a book’s cover design! I find that extraordinary, and I would be fascinated to know if that dynamic is still in play at all. There was also the expensive practice of co-op advertising, which Friss notes, involved publishers paying to have books placed in the most visible area. To secure a spot on the front table at every Barnes & Noble could cost $10,000 for two weeks. That’s another dynamic I would be fascinated to know if it’s still in play and how much it costs these days, if so. Then, when Amazon became the 800-pound gorilla in the bookshop, Barnes & Noble became the underdog and the hero of local communities that once sought to circumvent its entreaty to build. It also helped that James Daunt, the new owner of Barnes & Noble as of 2019, swooped into revamp and rescue the chain ceding far more control to local managers who know their stores and communities better.

Finally, Friss ends the book with a little magic and optimism, if you read it that way. He showcases the indie bookshop story of famed and critically acclaimed author Ann Patchett, along with her co-owner, Karen Hayes. Parnassus opened in the fall of 2011 and has been a roaring success ever since, even weathering the COVID-19 pandemic. The success of Parnassus has been seen by Patchett, Hill, glowing articles in NPR and The New York Times, among others, as a sign of the viability of indies and their comeback against the perennial behemoth of Amazon. But I feel like there’s one notable 800-pound gorilla within that narrative, too: Patchett herself, who had not just the ability to throw $300,000 at the project, but she possessed the name recognition to garner a lot of attention on her bookshop, along with bringing in many literary giants to help bolster it therein. Nevertheless, as I said before, competition is steep, but the indies find a way to carve out their niche, and surely will continue to do so.

Growing up, I was fortunate that only a few minutes from my house was a Books-A-Million. I spent many hours and dollars, especially after procuring a job, my own money, and a car, browsing as one might have done at The Old Corner in the mid-1800s. Then, it closed in 2014. Today, it’s a 5 Below store. (Channeling you, Friss!) Not much farther than where the Books-A-Million used to be is a Half Price Books. I wonder what Hahner and Steloff would have to say about discounted books, another aspect of bookselling that was disdained for years. And indeed, about 15 minutes from my house is a Barnes & Noble, and perhaps to Riggio’s delight, I do feel a sense of welcome and magic when entering Barnes & Noble. I’m glad it’s there. That said, I also still order books from Amazon.com. And I buy books from Half Price Books, including at their big yearly warehouse sale. Or I browse and purchase many from Little Friends of [Insert Local Library]. And Walmart and Target. Walgreens, too. If you sell books, I might just buy ’em. If Roger Mifflin rolled up with his blue wagon filled with books (which is where the namesake for Patchett’s bookshop, Parnassus, comes from based on Christopher Morley’s 1917 novel, Parnassus on Wheels), I’d surely buy one or many. That chapter about bookshops on wheels was delightful, by the way. Interspersed throughout all the chapters were small tidbits, like the book smell we readers all love, or animals (cats and dogs) within bookstores, or the architecture of bookstores (roundtables make more sense than even shelves, if you can help it), among others.

I just love books. And bookstores. And bookshops. And books from websites. But no, to make Hill happy, too, I never embraced Barnes & Nobles’ Nook, or Amazon’s Kindle. Physical books will always be my preference. I just can’t promise you where I will procure them.

Friss, like the best of booksellers before him, sold me on how fascinating the history of bookselling has been, from humble beginnings to book wagons and sidewalk hawkers to indies and chains, ups and downs, the avant garde and radical. Bookselling is a microcosm of America and what a lovely story it is.