Nestled deep in the heart between San Francisco and Sacramento lives the Alibi Bookshop! This week, in the latest of “What makes all of these cool indie bookstores tick?” we present to you, their proprietor, Karen, to unpack what publishers could do better to interface with stores like hers and the funniest things that happen when you bring back the 90s.
You can check out the other interview we did with Karen on the blog here.
Get the People’s Guide to Publishinghere, and the workbook here! Want to stay up to date on new podcast episodes and happenings at Microcosm? Subscribe to our newsletter!
Welcome to the next installment of the Bookstore Solidarity Project! Every month, we’ll be highlighting indie bookstore owners and booksellers across the country.
For March, we’re featuring Charlie’s Queer Books, in Seattle, Washington! Charlie’s isn’t the first queer bookstore in Seattle, but it is the first in 20 years. They opened last year, with a focus on diversity and intersectionality in their titles.
Your name and pronouns? Charlie Hunts (He/him)
Tell us a little bit about the store and your community! We began as a magic disco-tiled book cart doing pop-ups and then we opened our brick and mortar home in Nov 2023. Our shop is in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. It’s a funky part of town that’s home to a massive bridge troll sculpture, a rocket, former home to a famous clown, and self-proclaimed “Center of the Universe,” so where better to open a queer bookstore? The Seattle/Tacoma area has the third-highest percentage of LGBTQ+ people among the nation’s 15 largest metros only behind San Francisco/Oakland and Boston/Cambridge, so this city was eager to have a “third place” other than nightlife to hang out at.
What got you into bookselling? I was a college dropout Harley Davidson mechanic who happened to get in a motorcycle accident *shocker* that left me bed-bound for more than a year. In that time, I fell in love with reading! I went back to school as an English major, started my career in publishing, and then pivoted to marketing for different industries. With the onslaught of book bans, anti-LGBTQ legislation, and the need in the market for queer spaces, I felt like the time was right to return to books.
What’s something about your store that you think will surprise people? The Seattle Times said we have the best bookstore bathroom in the city. Seriously.
What are some of you favorite ways your community supports your store? In the short time we’ve been open we’ve had everything from a couple’s first kiss under our mistletoe, to a wife and wife who gifted each other the same book, both purchased here. SO gay, ha. We have a great mix of tourists, locals in the neighborhood, and folks who seek us out. We have our upstairs dedicated to community hangs with tables, reading nooks, and a meeting space. They have shown up big time at our events too.
In February 2024, in Maricopa, AZ, IBPA’s CEO Andrea Fleck-Nisbet awarded the PubWest Innovator Award to Microcosm Publishing Founder and CEO Joe Biel for “Reimagining what publishing can or should be” and “Exceptional efforts to develop new skills that expand publishing into the future.” Here is Fleck-Nisbet’s speech and Biel’s Q&A period from the awards ceremony.
Get the People’s Guide to Publishinghere, and the workbook here! Want to stay up to date on new podcast episodes and happenings at Microcosm? Subscribe to our newsletter!
Print: A Bookstore has been a triumphant, bright light in envisioning what a bookstore could be. Both as a brick and mortar that is a champion for information and reading, but also holding up its staff and creating entertaining skit videos with its staff! This week on the pod, we feature co-owner Josh Christie about the store in our ongoing Bookstore Solidarity project!
Get the People’s Guide to Publishinghere, and the workbook here! Want to stay up to date on new podcast episodes and happenings at Microcosm? Subscribe to our newsletter!
Welcome to the next installment of the Bookstore Solidarity Project! Every month, we’ll be highlighting indie bookstore owners and booksellers across the country.This month, we’re featuring Alibi Bookshop in Vallejo, California, owned by Karen Finlay.
Your name and pronouns? Karen Finlay, she/her
Tell us a little bit about the store and your community! We moved to Vallejo from Oakland in 2017, and there was a tiny used bookstore with a small selection; I was disappointed that we didn’t have something *more.* Some people can’t live away from water, and I can’t live far away from a bookstore. One day I said, “I wish I could open a bookstore in Vallejo!” Well, be careful what you wish for — we wound up buying the store and opened in 2019. Not the greatest timing because a pandemic was looming, but our community has kept us here and we are so, so grateful.
Vallejo, the most diverse city in the US, is an interesting and historical town with its share of issues, but the best community anywhere. It was a navy town , but the navy left in the late ’90s and the city declared bankruptcy in 2008, and our downtown still reflects that. But we are working hard to bring back some vitality, and it’s been fantastic! The pandemic derailed our initial efforts, but we’ve been ramping up again. We’ve had sold out events at the local movie theater, two active book clubs, author events, a writing group, partnerships with local businesses… And anchoring downtown to bring in more businesses. We love it here so much. We try very hard to explain that shopping locally is one of the best things you can do for your city, and the message is starting to take hold. We have a ways to go, but the baby steps are getting bigger.
We don’t have a shop cat — we have two enormous “kittens” who are useless at shelving, so they have to stay home.
What got you into bookselling? In high school I got a job at Upstart Crow, was an English/Creative Writing major in college and grad school, worked in publishing for nearly 20 years (a year of that with THE GREAT ANNA-LISA), and voila, now I own a bookstore!
What’s something about your store that you think will surprise people? There are continual surprises and delights in this store — sometimes I think it MUST be haunted. For years this space was a legendary cigar shop, but it was also a jeweler, an egg store in the 1930s, the Democratic Headquarters for Vallejo for Robert Kennedy’s campaign so Teddy Kennedy was here, but my favorite incarnation was that it was “Foxy Lady Boutique” that specialized in hot pants. And I just discovered that the movie star Raymond Burr lived in this building as a child!
I think the thing people are surprised about that there’s a bookstore here at all! People think that bookstores are a thing of the past, and we gladly prove them wrong. Just now a woman was in here — she drove here from a different town because she had heard about us and wanted to see what the “fuss was about,” and said that I proved them all right! Take THAT, Amazon.
What are some of you favorite ways your community supports your store? Vallejo SHOWS UP for us. We have a dedicated core group of customers, and they try to support by buying books/gifts, sharing on social media, spreading the word or even bringing us strawberries or flowers from the farmer’s market, and today a lady brought me a donut because she was thinking of me. But my favorite are the people who stop by to make sure I’ve gotten something to eat! I love our community so, so much.
What are two books you can’t wait for people to read, or your current favorite handsells? My favorite handsells are “Tell the Wolves I’m Home” and right now, “The Great Believers” and “Just Kids.”
So much of book publishing is about distributing tasks, so how can publishers take more of these operational aspects in-house? This week on the pod, guest Anthony Goff, President of Blackstone Publishing, walks us through many of their aspects that are vertically integrated, from recording studios to rights sales to printing and distribution—to performing these services for other publishers.
Get the People’s Guide to Publishinghere, and the workbook here! Want to stay up to date on new podcast episodes and happenings at Microcosm? Subscribe to our newsletter!
Welcome to the next installment of the Bookstore Solidarity Project! Every month, we’ll be highlighting indie bookstore owners and booksellers across the country.
For January, we managed to wrangle Josh Christie of Print: A Bookstore, in Portland, Maine. Fun fact about Print— it’s where Abby the Marketing Manager was first really introduced to Microcosm, thanks to Print’s awesome selection of zines and books!
Your name and pronouns? Josh Christie, he/him
Tell us a little bit about the store and your community! We love being the most progressive, most queer-friendly bookstore in our already lefty little city. We’ve been a store for 7 years in November (!). No store cat, through four of us have dogs and one of us has pet bunnies.
What got you into bookselling? I couldn’t figure out what else to do with a degree in political science. This is my 20th year as a bookseller, so now it’s hard to imagine doing anything else.
What’s something about your store that you think will surprise people? Our store has been many things prior to our tenancy, including a furniture designer’s workshop, hardware store / scuba shop, and girls school. Plus, the store is haunted.
What are some of you favorite ways your community supports your store? The community is super-supportive of all our social media antics, which is loads of fun. They’ve also really latched on to our book clubs – we’ve got four now, and each pulls at least a dozen attendees for every meeting.
Be sure to follow Print: A Bookstore onInstagram, Twitter, and Tiktok (you definitely want to check out their Tiktok). Check out his podcast interview here!
Welcome to the next installment of the Bookstore Solidarity Project! Every month, we’ll be highlighting indie bookstore owners and booksellers across the country.
This month, we’re featuring The Shop at MATTER in Denver! It’s a Black- and woman-owned store that also triples as a design consultancy and letterpress workshop.
Your name and pronouns? Rick Griffith (He/Him/Them)
Tell us a little bit about the store and your community! Since 2014 our bookstore has been the only Black- and woman-owned independent, full service (internet and brick) cultural justice bookstore in the United States Mountain Time Zone. We are a haven for fem, queer, non-binary, trans, LatinX, Indigenous, AAPI, and Black persons. We have always respected and invested in the intellectual and creative products of the people who represent our community. We have a print shop with five letterpress printing presses and thousands of pieces of wood type that we employ to print community projects that are pro-democracy, pro-liberation, and pro-freedom. We are political—and we are activists. A bookstore to integrate Art, Design and Cultural Justice for all generations.
What got you into bookselling? The desire to positively affect the lives of the people we know and love with books and products that acknowledge those of us in the margins.
What’s something about your store that you think will surprise people? We are working on a lending library for our community so everyone can have access. We have five 19th and early 20th century printing presses. We letterpress print for our community and ask people to pay what they can afford for most of our prints.
What are some of you favorite ways your community supports your store? Besides buying books, buying our prints and posters. Ordering for personal and business book clubs. Having us bring our pop-up to conferences and large gatherings. Getting the word out. Shopping in pairs.
Welcome to the next installment of the Bookstore Solidarity Project! Every month, we’ll be highlighting indie bookstore owners and booksellers across the country.
Tell us a little bit about the store and your community! Room was founded in 1975 as a scrappy little feminist bookstore, and has grown over the years into Madison’s biggest independent bookstore. We are an all-around indie with a strong focus on LGBTQIA, anti-racism, abolitionist, feminist, progressive voices in all genres. We’re a dog-friendly shop (and sometimes shop dogs Clio and Janeway come to work with us!). We are known for our community work and activism (we initiated Bookstores Against Borders in 2019, raising over $100K with the help of other indie bookstores and readers to benefit RAICES, an immigrant rights org that does important work particularly in Texas). We have a quirky and no-holds-barred social media brand and are particularly known for our book flowcharts and other queer social media vibes. Wes Lukes and I bought the store in 2018 from longtime owners/founder Sandi Torkildson and Nancy Geary, and reinvigorated its radical commitments just before the onset of the pandemic. We have a beautiful new space (we were displaced from downtown Madison due to a gentrifying high-rise that demolished our former block). We’re in the beautiful, low-key Atwood neighborhood on Madison’s East side, in an old barrel-roofed building, surrounded by tons of families and progressive community members and dozens of likeminded local small businesses, which is a perfect location for us.
What got you into bookselling? I loved books from a young age and just never let go.
What’s something about your store that you think will surprise people? Our store’s floors have a very slight slope, because over a hundred years ago when it was built, the building was home to a car repair place, (there’s a pulley from the Model-T Ford system that’s hanging above the original entryway near our checkout counter). The floors sloped so that oil and water and whatever other fluids would flow out the building into the street to be washed into the sewer. When we moved here and the builders retrofitted our old bookshelves into the space there was much gnashing of teeth and some very creative solutionmaking to accommodate this reality.
What are some of you favorite ways your community supports your store? I love when customers get into a particular staff person’s recommendations, or tell us about how a book we sold them was the perfect choice for what they were looking for. I think of books as an elaborate and uniquely human way to communicate expressively and asynchronously, we’re all just yelling into the void. You know. More or less quietly. It’s magical to feel an off-the-beaten-path real connection with a community member. I also just love hearing people come into the store and exclaim over the huge breadth of queer books and sidelines we have. Being a destination for queer people, especially trans and non-binary people who don’t always feel directly welcomed in queer spaces (particularly legacy feminist/lesbian ones like Room historically was) is what we’re here for. Those community-building connections are huge.
What are two books you can’t wait for people to read, or your current favorite handsells? I can’t wait to sell The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo–it’s the historical fiction T4T monsterfucking horror novella of my dreams. I’m also very excited about Mercury Stardust’s Safe and Sound book of home repair for renters–I think it’s such a kind and helpful book that serves a niche nobody else is paying attention to.
How can customers who aren’t local shop your shelves? They can order on our website at roomofonesown.com, or email us for recommendations at room.bookstore@gmail.com
Marc Campbell, a Black, gay therapist, works with queer kids and parents to create loving and accepting homes where people can safely be themselves and parents can understand their children. This week on the pod, we welcome him as a special guest to talk about his brand new book, I Love My Queer Kid!
Get the People’s Guide to Publishinghere, and the workbook here! Want to stay up to date on new podcast episodes and happenings at Microcosm? Subscribe to our newsletter!
