Zibby chats with author and historian Evan Friss about his New York Times bestseller, THE BOOKSHOP, an affectionate and immersive history of the American bookstore and an absolute delight for all bibliophiles. Evan, who was inspired to write this book by his wife’s job at Three Lives & Company, talks about evolution of the bookshop in the United States, the stories behind the most beloved indie stores, like RJ Julia, the passionate people who bring these spaces to life, and the critical importance of the bookstore as a sacred community space. He also compares bookstores to endangered species and urges us to find ways to ensure their legacy and survival.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Evan. Thanks so much for coming on Totally Booked to talk about the Bookshop, A History Of The American Bookstore.

Congrats. 

Evan: Thanks so much for having me. 

Zibby: As we were just quickly discussing, we met on a panel at the Tucson Festival of Books, which was lovely, so thank you. That was really fun. 

Evan: Good time. 

Zibby: It's pretty self-explanatory from your title and subtitle. Thank you. Spot on. Good job. Talk a little bit about the book.

What made you wanna write this book and what can readers expect? 

Evan: Yeah, so it's as the boring type suggest. It's a history of the American bookstore. I'm a historian who always liked writing and researching, but struggled with figuring out ideas. And in graduate school, everybody seemed to come in with notions, very specific ideas of what they wanted to write about.

And. I was always more maybe open-minded as a euphemistic way of thinking about it, but I was always interested in writing things that I writing about things that I cared about and bookshops became a passion of mine while I was in graduate school. Not just because I was a heavy reader, but because my then girlfriend, current wife, got a job at three lives and company.

A small but mighty bookshop in the West Village of New York. And those two interests, my interest in studying history and her experience in book selling created this marriage. 

Zibby: I thought you meant your interest in her. 

Evan: Yes, my interest in her, admittedly. I was always much more of a book person than I was a bookstore person, so I was a heavy reader, but never was the kind of person who spent hours in bookstores.

I felt like a loiter and sometimes uncomfortable, even though I'd like the experience, but because I would go visit her and hear about. What it was like to work in a bookshop. It opened up a, just a different way of thinking about these spaces and how important they are, and I began to, yeah, fall in love with the spaces and thought it was ripe for a book.

Zibby: Amazing. And at the panel you said a lot of bookstores were upset not to have been included, or readers who are passionate about their own bookstores giving, like, why didn't you include blah, blah, blah. So how many did you include? Did you even count? 

Evan: I don't know. I'd have to check the index. Not enough, as people have written me lots of notes about x bookstore, y bookstore, and they don't, those notes don't bother me. I usually read them and agree with them and say, maybe I never heard of this bookstore. Sometimes I have heard of the bookshop and it sometimes it was in the first draft and then got cut at some point. So there are lots of cases to be made for, including lots of great bookstores that didn't make the final cut.

But it's impossible to write a comprehensive history of almost anything, let alone something that has such a rich history is book selling. 

Zibby: What you did that I loved is wrote about the bookstore owners or people really affiliated with the store and their backstory and sometimes even their ancestor story.

And so you're not just talking about this bookstore was set up on this day and these are the types of books and blah, blah, blah, but you're really like, listen to this story about RJ Julia and how it came to be. And now I will, I like wanted to email Roxanne Cody after I read this. I was like, I had no idea about this backstory.

Can I read that like little section about. About her. Do you mind please, and you do this for so many people, including, and I'll just leave this as a teaser, and Paget's Virginity, which is the most salacious piece of this whole book that should be like leading the headlines, but that's okay. I'll just throw it out there.

Okay. This is called The Grandmother, and you said you wrote just before the second World War, a recently widowed Hungarian Jew named Julia, insisted that her son finished school. The boy graduated from high school in 1942 and survived the Holocaust. Julia went to a concentration camp. She never returned.

The son came to the US and started his own family. His daughter, Roxanne J Cody, grew up in a house full of books and with a mother who read to her constantly. In 1990, Cody leaving behind a partnership in an accounting firm, opened an enchanting bookstore in Madison, Connecticut. She named it after the grandmother she never met our Jay. Julia. Julia, I did not know that. I'm so glad you included that. 

Evan: Yeah, it's a fascinating story and one of many. When I'm writing an, in a history, that's a kind of in a, an institutional history, what is, what have bookstores meant over time. But it's really about the people who animate those spaces.

First and foremost, the people who start these bookstores, book sellers, people like yourself, and also the customers, the people who work there. As I write about the UPS drivers, they become, these environments that are home to so many different kinds of people, and it's those people who make this space.

And RJ Julie is a great example of a shop that is an anchor of that community. If you walk up and down, you know the streets of Madison, Connecticut, if that bookstore wasn't there, there would be something missing. I think palpably a void. 

Zibby: I was there and did walk up and down and I was like, oh my gosh, this is where RJ Julia is.

I was so excited. It was like. Finding like a miracle. I was looking at a school with my daughter or something. Anyway, you also write so beautifully about books and bookstores from a sort of sensory experience. Can I read a little bit more? Is that okay? See, I'm making this so easy on you. 

Evan: Yeah. 

Zibby: Aren't you glad you did this podcast?

You're like, I'm just gonna kick it. I'm gonna check my email. I'm not even gonna pay attention. You wrote Bookstores also stimulate our senses. Being surrounded by books matters. Sociologists have found that just growing up in a home full of books, mere proximity, confers a lifetime of intellectual benefits.

Books offer warmth, comfort, and refuge. It's no wonder then that so many social media accounts deal in what might be called book porn, glimpses of book stuffed bookstores, libraries, and wood panel dens at the same time, bookstore imbued with a near Holy Spirit. Many of us wi at the idea of throwing one in the trash.

That's part of the reason why entering a bookstore can feel like walking into an old church. And then you also said more so than bars or coffee shops. They are also places in which to get lost and by way of the books to escape reality. For every chatty customer, there's another who prefers to be left alone, to be by oneself, among others.

To feel a book's heft, to smell a paperbacks perfume. To savor slowed time. Love that. 

Evan: Thanks. And speaking of which, you have a pretty glam background there. I thought I had an impressive display of books behind me in my office, but you have the full rainbow effect and lots of books and that confers as I write in the book.

There's a sense of wonder, all those stories and portals that are opened, but it's also just warm as a kind of design feature. And one of the things that I ru about our modern world is, people ask me are, is anybody reading anymore? And that's a whole nother discussion, but I just like the prominence of books and worry about books disappearing from the landscape as physical objects and libraries have had to reinvent themselves and often do a lot of great community kind of events and help people write resumes and have after school kind of activities and rent, drills and chainsaws and stuff.

But sometimes the books are too hidden and I think there's a real power. Of the kind of visibility, the smell the touch of books that I hope we can appreciate and conserve in some way. 

Zibby: I did not know I could learn how to use a chainsaw at my local library, but now I will look up those hours.

Yeah. Didn't you call it like Bima, what's it called? The smell of books or something? 

Evan: Yeah. There's a debate whether that word exists or not, but my proofreader was cool with it. So we went with it. It was borderline. But yeah, there's a whole, arresting power of the scent of a book, which was fun to think about.

And of course is part of the allure of a library or a bookshop. 

Zibby: It is crazy that there's an industry where a bookstore can be just a few doors down from a library. Where the thing that the store is selling is completely free. It doesn't make any sense. It would be like a high-end designer clothing store, and then all the exact same clothes are free two doors down.

Like why would anyone go to the first store next to Rent the Runway? Would you still buy, would you still buy the dress if you could rent it? I don't know. 

Evan: Yeah booksellers assume the same and when libraries became popular in the late 19th century, the various trade groups of booksellers assumed that this was the demise of their industry.

Why would anyone pay for a book that was freely accessible? And it turned out not to be the case for a variety of reasons, but even nowadays, lots of people who come in the bookstores, and maybe you experienced this at yours too, a lot of times people will come in and get books that are on hold at the library, new books that they're desperate to read or that they just wanna populate their shelves with because they feel like it will give them something even after they read it. Just having it there, looking at the title, these books behind me, most of which I've read, I guess at some point when I was in graduate school. But I occasionally will just look up and down and it's like a historical timeline. I remember the classes that I was taking or something about the book.

And not to mention that I, wrote the margins and underlying stuff, which is not okay with library books. 

Zibby: True. 

Very true. 

Yeah. I wrote a whole memoir about my history with books and like how each one is I remembered where I was and it's so linked to a time in my life, like this was linked to this loss and this was linked to this happy time.

And I remember this trip that, 'cause books, when I look around my room and I, my eye catches on a book. It's not necessarily the book, it's the part. Of me and my history that gets activated and the people I was with. And there's signals of, it's like photo albums. I like also love having photo albums around which, yeah.

Evan: And I think the fact that libraries and booksellers, I. Are no longer enemies and in fact often collaborate. Yep. Speak to what is really underlying the kind of shared mission of these two different institutions, which is, to evangelize the reading and the benefit of books. And I don't know, maybe some authors are just trying to be polite, but when I speak with other authors or go to these festivals, I think.

I think we're all happy for readers to find our books however they do. And I know I'm grateful when people check out my book from the library and libraries have them and booksellers I think appreciate the role of libraries for people who don't want to, or can't afford to spend books. And I think there's a, an ecosystem in which they both benefit one another and we see that.

Probably today, more than ever before, as the kind of threats to reading and assaults on books make them common defenders and champions of literature. 

Zibby: Interesting. Very true. Wow. So everybody always asks me, and by the way, as a publisher, a big percent, not a majority percent, but a percent of all our sales of every book we publish comes from libraries and aggregate, by the way.

So I think authors are happy that people are reading them in the libraries, because if they weren't, they would, we would lose all those library sales too. So even though it's not one-on-one, it makes up for the. Individual sales. Anyway, you know all this and people are always asking me when I say I have a bookstore, they're like why would you have a bookstore?

Can you even make money? It's not profitable. It's a losing business. Aren't books on the decline? Why would you go there? But. In reading the book, like so many people are just really doubling down or they feel like the bookstore. And the part with Anne Patchett is that she didn't even wanna live in a place without a bookstore, so you had to put a bookstore in Nashville, an indie bookstore.

So what do you think about all that? 

Evan: Yeah it's confusing. When I first started this book, I was worried about striking the right tone and being also historically accurate about. The great decimation of bookstores, which in on the one hand is very true. Just the number of bookshops that we have today is a fraction of what there was a generation ago, and on a per capita basis even smaller than much of the 20th century and even 19th century.

So I think that's important. But there are also much more optimistic notes that are also true in that the kind of great decline seems to have ceased that there are many bookstores that are doing very well. But it is also true. People don't get into book selling as a way to get rich, or at least they shouldn't.

And it is often a project of passion. And, Anne Patchett's bookstore is certainly like that. And I suspect yours is also, and not that these entities don't want to make money, but that there's a, at least a secondary, if not primary motivation, which is more than the bottom line. And that's always been the case.

And as I write in the book, if there is one theme of book selling, it's that it's a precarious industry. On the verge of death essentially since the very beginning. And that's been a theme embraced by outsiders, but also to some degree by insiders. And there have been very good reasons for that. So we could look at it like there are relatively few bookstores today.

I. Which is true, but on the other hand, it's a miracle that there are as many as there are when everyone walking into your bookstore knows that they can get the same product delivered to their house in a day at the same price and oftentimes cheaper than you're selling it for.

Zibby: Or just snapping their fingers and it like appears the sound is in their ears.

Like instantly. 

Evan: Yeah, exactly. You can get it on your devices almost instantaneously. People are choosing deliberately to support these institutions and I hope that, suggests, which I think it does, just a kind of valuing of these spaces that hopefully will ensure their. Long-term survivability, but as I write in the book, if, they're on the endangered species list, and so we can celebrate the success and there are many doing well and there are people who keep opening them, but we also need to appreciate the precarity of the business and hopefully continue to, find ways to ensure their legacy and ongoing practical ability to survive.

Zibby: We are the polar bears or of the com of the retail space. Is that it? 

Evan: Polar bear, much beloved. Yep. Oh great. And people love them, but if we don't actively support them yeah. They're certainly endangered. 

Zibby: Sad. Okay. I'm happy to be a defender of the endangered species of the book world.

Wait, tell me about, you started talking about your new book when we were on the panel about lists, and then I saw you sold it for some, like at auction, or there was some really exciting news. Tell me all about that. 

Evan: Yeah, so I said I can never come up with a good idea for a book, and all of these ideas seem zany to me, but.

I was writing this bookshop book, and I was finishing it up at this amazing residency at McDowell, which maybe you've heard of is in, in New Hampshire. I was surrounded by all these genius people and filmmakers and sculptors and poets, and I don't know what I was doing there. I think I got in, it was a mistake, but it was amazing.

And I was almost done this project, and I, my agent said, why don't you spend a day figuring out the next book? And I'm like walking around the woods waiting for ideas to you know, lightning bolt in me and. Nothing's happening, but then I give this talk about the bookshop and I read from part of it and the part that I read has this very kind of listy narrative style.

And there's, there are several actual lists in the book. And this guy comes up to me after the reading and says he's a Kenyan novelist, says you really love lists. I said, you know what I do. And we started trading back and forth texts about our favorite lists and literature and history, and it seemed like a wild idea of, I said, what if I write a history of the list?

And the essential premise of the book is that we as humans created fire. The wheel and the list, like if you wanna understand humanity and our psychology, our competitiveness, our various cultures over time, that lists are the lens. And I thought it was crazy, but I started reading it to people and people seemed to like it, including eventually, editors and such.

So yes, I have a contract for the book, but I. I have to still write the book. I'm working on it, but it's a very vast subject and which is fun, but also challenging to try and wrap my head around. 

Zibby: When's that do? 

Evan: I don't really wanna say

Zibby: Okay. 

Evan: But I'll just say, I'm a, one of the things I pride myself on is, I like to think of myself as a quote, real historian. I'm a professor at a university and the book will be well researched. I hope, or I think so. It takes me a long time 'cause I like to, I enjoy the research, but there's a lot of digging, a lot of reading and learning and I'm not an expert on, ancient, Babylonia, but there are lists and I have to try and learn as much as I can.

So I'm working on it. 

Zibby: Yeah, my to-do list is a disaster. I like scribble it on the back of things and I throw it in my purse, and then I put that into my backpack and then I can't find it. And I don't know. Do you have a to-do list? 

Evan: I do have various lists, and I think most of us do. That's part of what makes the subject appealing is that it's in plain sight in part of our daily lives, but most of us.

I haven't given it too much thought. And then of course, even publishing, there are the kind of lists and a list authors and need list authors and yep. Your lists and bestseller lists and all the rest. So there's some continuity and I think of lists as texts and literature.

So it's related to bookshops in a way. 

Zibby: Love it. So tell me about what you're teaching right now. 

Evan: I am teaching. I teach a couple of different courses here. I teach surveys of American history. I teach courses on oral history, which is essentially interviewing people about their own lives and experiences, and I teach.

Regularly, a course that I came up with a few years ago called The History of Today, where we essentially contextualize the news. So I'm not teaching it this semester, but if I was, we might read about. Tariff policies, back in the 1920s, things that get talked about in the news, but that honestly, most students don't have a lot of historical context about what's going on.

Why are the United States and China have this kind of economic war? What is the history of that relationship? So it's not really meant to be a contentious class where the students are debating. But is really providing some basic background for hot button issues, which I think is useful and the students seem to enjoy, and they'll often admit, that they really don't know a whole lot about the backstory of whatever's happening in regards to American politics elections, or what's happening in Israel, or what's happening with China, or what's happening with Ukraine and Russia and all the rest.

Zibby: Amazing. So what's the last book that you bought in a bookstore? 

Evan: I just bought Twist by Column MCC Can. Which is, I'm really enjoying it about underwater cables that are breaking. 

Zibby: Terrifying though, a little bit, right? Isn't it? Very I left a little unsettled by the whole thing 

Evan: And he's a, he loves lists also and uses them in his writing, so that had some nice kind of. 

Zibby: Synergy. 

Evan: Yes. Synergy and yeah, that's the book I'm currently reading. I read Orbital this year. Which I really like. Samantha Harvey's book. I read Stoner, which is this book about a middle aged English professor. So somebody recommended that it's melancholy and a sad life of being a middle-aged man who's a professor, so that it might strike a chord with me.

Zibby: How uplifting do you see any new trends that are like really exciting? I, I've. Feel like there's, the niche bookstore is in popular, rising in popularity now there's like the rom-com store, the L-G-B-T-Q store, like I know you write about this, but like specialty stores that have a particular niche.

But do you, in your research or now, do you see anything else on the horizon or what do you think? 

Evan: I think booksellers have found creative ways to engage with broader audience is in a variety of ways. And I see many shops doing. Things beyond just a typical kind of author talk. So some are having literary tours of, the neighborhood or the cities that they're in, and just creative ways of enticing different kind of customers.

The specialty shops, as you mentioned, they're a whole spade of romance bookstores that have cropped up in the last couple of years. Those tend to be very difficult as businesses because they're. Catering to some, more niche audience. And during the great decline of bookstores in the eighties and more so in the nineties, those shops often struggled the most.

But, so I hope that's not the case, but I think it's exciting to see different kinds of people entering the book selling space. And we continue to see that and. That's exciting, but it's up to, people like you have these shops to try and think about and continually reinvent these spaces, which I think has been happening and drawing in different kind of audiences.

Zibby: Amazing. Evan, thank you for highlighting the book Bookshop. Bookstores are one of my favorite places on earth. I am a loiter. I am not afraid. If I ever have time, I could spend all day there. But yeah, I think being surrounded by books is like the ultimate anti-anxiety medication. 

Evan: Yes. And 

Zibby: loitering better when paired with an actual anti-anxiety medication, but still okay on its own.

Evan: Yes. And today more than ever, if you can, and I see people doing this 'cause I occasionally pick up a shift at my wife's bookshop. People would just put their phone away and spend fifteen, twenty, twenty five minutes walking around the store, picking up a book, reading a sentence here and there, and it's, I think, such a kind of powerful and restorative experience.

Zibby: Very true. Thanks for highlighting it. All right. 

Evan: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me on and for all you do for books and literature and bookshops and all the rest. 

Zibby: Thank you. Appreciate it. 

All right. 

Take care, Evan. Thank you. Bye 

Evan: bye.