Bookstore Pop-Ups

Bookstore Pop-ups, Hybrids, and Rebels: Why Indie booksellers are leading the movement to support and foster local businesses

A panel discussion with maverick booksellers David Kipen, Andrew Laties, and Josh Spencer on why there is no better time to be in the book business. “For a while I was really interested in the future of books. Now I’m interested in the present of books.” – Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, co-founder, Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn (founded 2009) For the past decade, the book business has been dominated by conversations about chain stores, online retailers, and the e-book market, all of which pointed to the perennial uncertainty about the future of books generally. And yet from coast to coast a new wave of independent booksellers is staking a claim and embracing uncertainty to make the point: books are still here, and the future is now. Skylight books is pleased to welcome David Kipen (Libros Schmibros), Andrew Laties (Rebel Bookseller) and Josh Spencer (The Last Bookstore) for a panel discussion on why and how:

• Even in a treacherous economy, independent bookshops like Brooklyn’s Greenlight Bookstore are opening and succeeding;
• Pop-up stores, like the current Libros Schmibros partnership with the Hammer Museum, are becoming the norm
• Independent bookstores are leading the movement to support locally owned businesses.

David Kippen is the founder of Libros Schmibros, a hybrid lending library and used book shop in Boyle Heights.  He is the former director of the National Endowment for the Arts' National Reading Initiatives, and past book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, established Libros Schmibros in July 2010 Andy Laties is the author of Rebel Bookseller: Why Indie Business Represent Everything You Want to Fight For—From Free Speech to Buying Local to Building Communities. Laties co-founded Children's Bookstore, Children’s Bookfair Company, Children’s Museum Store, and Povertyfighters.com, and created the film Art of Selling Children’s Books. He co-founded and still manages the museum shop at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts, which Parents Choice called “the very best bookstore for picture books in the entire world.” Josh Spencer is the founder of The Last Bookstore in Downtown LA. After selling books online for a decade, Spencer decided to go backwards in time and open up a physical used bookstore in 2009.  With his neighborhood of downtown LA experiencing its own rebirth it seemed like the logical place to try retail time travel.  The Last Bookstore did well enough for him to move into a new location 10 times as big less than two years later, and the rest is history in the making (as we speak). Moderated by Emily Pullen from Skylight Books. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 11, 2011.