Confessions of a Bookseller’s Son
Yesterday I purchased my first book from Google. The novel, This is Where I Leave You, was the 45th book I’ve purchased online since I first bought an Ipad in May. I’ve bought 37 ebooks from Amazon, 7 from Apple, and now 1 from Google. It wouldn’t matter, except that I’m the son of Carla Cohen (recent Inc Magazine tribute), one of America’s finest independent booksellers.
Whether genetically or behaviorally programmed, books are deeply ingrained in my persona. My childhood: a 4-story house lined with overflowing bookshelves on much of the wall space. Some of my earliest memories are of Babar and Make Way for Ducklings. When I was 5, I took my turn reading out of the group Haggadah in front of 30 people assembled for our Passover seders. Every year, my parents dutifully schlepped their ” vacation book suitcase” brimming with paperbacks decades before Kindles were invented.
All of this history occurred, before my mother founded Politics and Prose Bookstore. After that, it was heresy to buy books anywhere but at the family business. Periodically, I found myself in airports with nothing to read and forked over the cash for the next Robert Parker or Michael Connelly novel. Mom knew about these impulsive purchases and her frown was a painful admonishment. It wasn’t just that shopping at Borders or Walden was distasteful. The larger infraction was that I chose mass market paperbacks, instead of Wallace Stegner.
Nina and I always returned from Washington with a huge shopping bag of books — perhaps the greatest perk of my life. I can hear her.
Get whatever you want honey. Shop the whole store. Pick out things for the kids. Do you have enough? Would Nina like this fun new Indian cookbook?
Each individually bound volume resonated far beyond the intrinsic value of what was between the covers. Providing and choosing books were acts of love. As her staff followed in her footsteps advising and nurturing their loyal customer base, P&P matured and thrived during a period when all hope faded for most of America’s independent bookstores. Sales increased meaningfully at P&P in 2010 with no thanks to my 45 ebooks.
Initially I felt guilt, but used my grueling travel schedule to rationalize such disloyalty. Later, as we embarked on the Politics and Prose sales process I knew habitual ebook use would inform our process. The more I read, the more I could entertain Mom during her illness. What comforted her most was talking about books and the business. She smiled when I told her about my enthusiasm for the Ipad Always she hoped I would embrace her taste and finally put down the remote control.
My passion for ebooks has greatly informed how I think about Politics and Prose. I acknowledge that I expect Politics and Prose’s core business model (the selling of bound volumes that sit on shelves) to erode during the next 10 years.
Another time, I will write an homage to e-reading’s many benefits, but for now, as my eyesight has abruptly deteriorated (Iphone nightmare) I can tell you I prefer bumping up the font to hunting for reading glasses. Among the books I’ve read electronically, I regret not owning a third of them in hard copy and in the cases of Freedom and The Finkler Question have purchased hardbacks as a follow-up. But banking on the ability to sell a relatively low-margin product that has technology alternatives will not be sustainable for the next 27 years.
For me, this has little impact on how I see the future of Politics and Prose because what my Mother and her partner Barbara created was far beyond a bookstore. It’s Washington’s premier cultural institution and an incredibly vital sanctuary for the civil exchange of ideas. Change is coming. With those changes, new owners have a wonderful business opportunity to expand on my mother’s mission. More products and services can serve Politics and Prose’s wonderful customers with opportunities to nourish their appetite for knowledge. Politics and Prose can live forever as a marketplace for ideas. To be sure, this is brand that cares about books, ideas, and people. The business will always sell many, many books. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be Politics and Prose.
Over the summer, during Mom’s clearest moments, we ruminated about the future of these marketplaces. These conversations synthesized 20 years of motifs about entrepreneurship in book retailing and the management of a community’s intellectual salon. Sitting on our lawn next to the forsythia that had come and gone she turned to me.
I wish I could be here to watch the next 10 years. With the right owners, P and P can be so much more than a bookstore.
This is the great challenge and exceptional opportunity that awaits the next owners of this brand’s untapped, unexplored potential. I’m excited for Washington.
