The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Thursday, September 5, 2013 - 3B
The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Thursday, September 5, 2013 - 3B
LITERATI
From Page 1B
"Now that we've read each oth-
er's favorites, we're agreeing more
about authors," she said.
But the manner with which she
reads continues to boggle Michael's
mind. Hilary always reads the last
page of a book before she gets to the
end.
I asked Michael whether he
thought it might be better not to
have any expectations at all.
"Hilary's answer might be much
different than mine," he said imme-
diately. But for him, "All their hope,
it fires me up. It gets me going."
He acknowledges differing opin-
ions on the future of the bookstore.
As Michael explained, the store is
attracting support from other busi-
nesses in the community.
Businessfromscratch
Two months after making the
hitherto bravest decision of their
lives, and amid the chaos that
accompanies opening a small busi-
ness, the two married on the first of
June, on the edge of Ann Arbor.
"It's funny," Michael said. "We
talked to the owners of Sweetwa-
ters (Coffee and Tea)," the Ann
Arbor cafe chain. "They're a mar-
ried couple, and they run Sweetwa-
ters together. So we went to them a
month ago, to ask advice about how
they work together as a married cou-
ple who run a business."
From this, they came up with a
system to compartmentalize work
and play. "We have our work rela-
tionship and then we have our per-
sonal relationship," Michael said.
"When we were working at our
apartment, we really had to make
rules. Like, no talking about Lite-
rati after midnight, because we'd go
crazy."
Starting a small business from
Michael and Hilary Gustafson opened the Literati bookstore after getting engaged.
talk to each of them alone, they each
worry about how the other is hold-
ing up.
"Hilary had a 100-degree fever
the day before we opened," Michael
said. "But we couldn't change
course. She had to be here, because
she's the book lady. She knows the
computer; she knows everything. So
that was long days for her."
"I think just putting everything
in perspective," Hilary said. "I have
to remind myself that we're so lucky
to be here and tobe embraced by the
community; I had to remind myself
of that in college a lot - that I'm
freedom to be studying and to do
all of these wonderful things. When
I think back on it now, I wish I had
taken more time to appreciate how
lucky that was."
"So just putting things in per-
spective as much as Ican. It'sso easy
to get wound up in the everyday and
get freaked out by all the deadlines
and papers and bills. You gotta take
a moment to just say, 'this is a really
cool thing."'
Continuing to expand
When I asked them what stresses
fearlessly unfazed by the passing of
Borders.
"Borders number one was 41,000
square feet. We are 2,600, which
is just a fraction. So we hope that
downtown Ann Arbor can support
that," Michael said.
Later, Hilary explains their phi-
losophy more organically, "We can't
beat Borders, but at the same time,
people talk to each other about what
excites them, and I think the things
that people get excited about will
grow here, and we'll expand, and
things'll grow."
They stress over what they have
control over. Michael described one
technical difficulty: "We ran out
of receipt paper, which is needed
when you are running a business.
Of all the details that were floating
around in our heads, we didn't think
there would be a limited amount of
receiptpaper! So I sprinted to office
Depot."
The biggest technical thing, for
any bookstore, is choosing what
books to stock. With her experience
as a sales rep, Hilary handles most of
this load.
"A lot of our inspiration and busi-
ness model is Greenlight," Michael
said of an independent bookstore
that Hilary worked at in Brook-
lyn. "When we first started playing
around with opening a bookstore,
Hilary hadn't worked in a bookstore
yet. We thought maybe we should
work in a bookstore first to make
sure it's something we want to do."
When I asked Hilary how it's
done, she outlined the basics of
bookstore management. "I have
sales reps that rep all of the pub-
lishers, which is what I used to do.
They have a list of a thousand titles,
of which you take 100, and they tell
you which ones they think might be
worth taking, and you can pick them
out yourself from there. They have
author history: they have review
attention - if they're going to beon
NPR; if they're going to be on Rachel
Maddow."
"We have 11,000 units. So that's
7,700 titles. We have about 1,000
with multiples. There's 3,172 units
of 986 titles. So we have about 8,000
one-copy books," Hilary said.
Hilary also explained that the
store shifts its inventory based on
the interest of its staff.
"They have the hugest impact
on what the store is," Hilary said.
"One of our staff members is really
into philosophy, soI said, 'Justmake
a list and I'll go through it' I don't
really read philosophy, but I'm really
glad that's becoming part of our
store."
Realism and idealism
Michael summed up the staff as
follows: seven starters, three for-
mer Borders employees, a former
Shaman Drum employee, two MFA
poetry graduates and the executive
director of the Great Lakes Book-
sellers Association.
"Everyone has brought their
own knowledge," Hilary said. "Jill
has brought some real parenting
knowledge. Poetry, obviously, we
have our two poetry guys. John
really knows philosophy and Deb's
really into social politics. Michael's
all about environmentalism; it's
really great."
The shelves in Literati were
bought from what was left of Bor-
ders. They purchased them the day
before the store went into demo.
"It was like a Ghost Town,"
Michael said. "We thought it would
be really cool to repurpose these
iconic pieces."
The typewriter in the display
case at the register, a 1930s Smith-
Corona, belonged to Michael's
grandfather. The typewriter is
where Literati got its black-and-
white checkerboard theme.
Michael emphasized how
they've tried to keep all the store
supplies local, or at least domestic.
The bookmarks and bags posed a
particular challenge.
"Somehow we need to encour-
age people to use their own bags,
because we don't philosophically
agree with the printing of all this,
so we wanted a 100-percent recy-
clable paper bag without heavy use
of dye, so we're hand-stamping all
the bags," Michael explained. "See,
five years ago, I created a stupid
little Facebook group that said, you
know, 'ban plastic bags.' I can't go
ahead and offer plastic bags. That
would just drive me nuts."
Literati tries to compromise
between realism and idealism,
between providing sanctuary for
the quiet relics of an evolving liter-
ary culture and acting as a tiny con-
cert hall for young slam poets from
The Neutral Zone (Ann Arbor's
teen center).
"I think it will bring people from
the community together," Hilary
said. "From a bunch of different
backgrounds - I think it'll be a
melting point, so we expect to have
people linger."
Beyond the books
In the first two months of Litera-
ti's existence, it had six events. Hil-
ary lists what they've hosted so far:
live music, authors, story time, a
woman who had walked the shores
of all of the great lakes.
Literati aspires to be a commu-
nity epicenter, as Borders was.
"The communication that hap-
pens around books is... ifbookstores
go under, that communication is
lost, and you will never get that
whimsy again; you will never get
that community feel," Michael said.
It's part of the reason Michael
and Hilary committed to a ship so
many people said was sinking: They
felt like there's something about the
ship itself that deserves saving.
"Strangers coming together
around books is exactly why we
wanted to be here. To see it happen
so immediately has been wonder-
ful," Hilary said.
Michael described watching a
pair of people in the store make a
pact to start pickling because they
were looking at a pickling book.
"I don't know if they bought the
book or not, but it doesn't really
matter," Michael said. "Those
types of interactions are lost if you
download your books by yourself in
your room."
"In a perfect world, our prices
would increase and we would buy
this building. ... In a perfect world
we would live nearby and walk to
the bookstore," Michael said. "And
we would be here all day, and we
would have fulltime employees. Oh
yeah, this is the dream."
The young couple talks about
their dream like storybook protag-
onists. Whether the story goes well
depends on whether Ann Arbor
keeps reading.
Literati will be providing the
Daily with advance copies of
books for future reviews.This
article was assigned and written
before the partnership began
and is in no way affected by the
professional arrangement.
Literati's bookshelves originated from the now closed Ann Arbor Borders.
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