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January 27, 2016 - Image 12

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Wednesday, January 27, 2016 // The Statement
4B
Wednesday, January 27, 2016 // The Statement

5B

I

n an era where you can have a banana slicer,
glow in the dark toilet paper, sugar-free
gummi bears, pajamas and the textbook

you need for class dropped on your doorstep
in two days via Amazon, it’s hard to believe
that the company started as a warehouse only
able to hold a couple hundred books at a time.
Considering that book sales currently make
up only 7 percent of the company’s revenue
annually, how is it possible that a business that
can only in a small part identify as a “bookseller”
has, for many people, replaced the need for
physical bookstores?

The answer may life in the fact that, although

the origins of Amazon were in book distribution,
CEO and Founder Jeff Bezos’ initiative was
never a seed planted by belief in the inherent
value of the written word.

In an article for The New Yorker, George

Packer writes that Bezos “quit his job at a
Manhattan Hedge fund and moved to Seattle to
found a company that could ride the exponential
growth of the early commercial internet.”

I’ve never been a stranger to the independent

bookstore. As the daughter of two writers
and a Brooklyn, N.Y. native it was a seemingly
unavoidable encounter. From pulling “Cat in
the Hat” and “The Snowy Day” off the bottom
shelves of Book Court in Carroll Gardens to
spending hours tucked away in the cozy back
corner, or in the backyard garden of Park Slope’s
Community Book Store inhaling anything from
“Captain Underpants” to “The Princess Diaries”
— these were sure signs of early literary promise.

My teen angst led me to the better-known

Strand bookstore. My twin brother Jack and
I would narrowly avoid Union Square in mid-
December and slip into Strand in pursuit of
reasonably priced and thoughtful holiday gifts
for our bookworm family members. We’d end up

splitting off to our respective sections — he into
music biographies or world records books, and
I into the poetry section or scrounging through
the hodge-podge of $1 gently used gems.
Although I spend very little time in New York
these days, I’ll still return to Strand to stumble
upon a secondhand copy of some classic that still
smells the way books should.

This is not to say, I, as a 21-year-old on a

college-student budget, with a deep love for the
written word, buy all my books at cute mom n’
pop shops that carry the best writers you’ve
never heard of without ever lurking into the
behemoth that is the world of Amazon or Barnes
& Noble.

I spent a good portion of my childhood in

Barnes & Noble, too, but in retrospect these
moments were different. There weren’t really
any comfy chairs, and every B & N I’d been to had
the same aesthetic of light colored wood, dark
green and neutral-colored woodland animals
painted onto the walls of the kids’ section.
Barnes & Noble was where I’d pull out a stack
of teen magazines that I wasn’t really supposed
to be reading, or wonder why it seemed that so
many of the books on display bore the same titles
as the multiplex cinema marquees with images
of their conventionally attractive protagonists
gracing the covers. In my humble opinion,
the covers had looked just as good the way the
illustrators had first printed them.

I will still, shamefully, admit that I bought or

rented all of my books on Amazon this semester
and last semester even purchased a book for
$2.99 that I needed for class as an e-book.
Amid the threats I hear about the perishing of
the physical book and the worldwide takeover
of Amazon and e-readers galore, I decided to
investigate a successful independent bookstore
in my current stomping grounds.

Ann Arbor’s own Literati, located on East

Washington Street, has come to characterize
this phase of my life the way Book Court did my
toddlerhood and Strand my adolescence. I can
often be found studying in The Espresso Bar,
a café that rests above the bookstore. Studying
might mean nursing a latte and choosing to read
what my roommate has lovingly coined “one of
those skinny poetry books” pulled from a shelf
downstairs while I use my PSYCH 240 textbook
as a glorified paperweight/armrest.

Literati is one of those bookstores that feels

alive. From the steady stream of readings to the
corner location with a big window to let light
in to the handwritten book recommendations
punctuating the shelves to the click-clack of
the available typewriter downstairs, the nearly
3-year-old book haven buzzes.

I chatted over coffee with Hilary Lowe

Gustafson and Michael Gustafson, the young
married couple who own Literati. I asked them
to look back and reflect on the bookstore’s origin
story.

In 2011, before opening Literati, they were

living in Brooklyn where Hilary worked at
Simon & Schuster Publishing house and part-
time at independent Green Light Bookstore.
Michael was working as a video artist and
freelance writer, and the two bonded over a love
of literary culture, which included independent
bookstores as a cornerstone of their social lives
and courtship.

Hilary and Michael saw Green Light as one of

their inspirations for opening Literati.

“They started in 2009, after the Kindle and

after all that and still thrived regardless, so
they were kind of our model community center
bookstore,” Hilary said.

Both owners are Michigan natives. Hilary

is from Ann Arbor and Michael from Lowell,

Michigan. When Borders closed both in
Ann Arbor and nationally in 2011, the couple
saw an opportunity to fill the gap in Ann
Arbor’s independent bookselling community,
specializing in new books.

“As part of our social life in New York, we

would go to bookstores,” Hilary said. “It just
seemed like a good community space … we
always talked about what it would be like to own
a store ourselves.”

When asked about the place of independent

booksellers in the wake of retailers like Amazon
and the advent of e-readers, Hilary and Michael
shared insight into the integrity and unparalleled
experience of independent bookstores.

“There are more bookstores in the last three

years opening than closing so we view that as a
trend, a return to independent bookstores after
many closed throughout the 2000s,” Michael
said, identifying the notion that the indie
bookstore is on the decline as something of a
fallacy.

The
owners
defended
their
bookstore

wholeheartedly, standing by the integrity of
books, suggesting that a megastore like Amazon
is unable to recognize the inherent value of
a book the way an independent business that
carefully handpicks its contents and creates a
holistic book-buying experience does.

“We don’t view Amazon as a competitor

because the product they’re offering is different,”
Hilary said. “Yeah, they offer a book, but they
don’t offer a space to explore and browse and
have whimsy in the same way you have in our
store.”

“I think that people purchase things online

that they know that they want, but bookstores
allow customers to browse and find things
they didn’t necessarily know that they wanted
and allow customers a chance to surprise

themselves,” Michael said.

Whimsy, surprise, chance — the owners spoke almost as if

the bookstore is an enchanted forest or arcade of sorts. What I
think they were getting at is a space that engages actively with the
community, that it’s part of something that Hilary doesn’t believe
larger booksellers get the opportunity to do.

“You can read reviews of a million people you don’t know, or

you can come to a bookstore and get to know the staff and find
someone on the staff that you really love the reading tastes of and
have a dialogue about that,” Hilary said.

I silently admited that reading the handwritten staff

recommendations in the store is less daunting than scanning
through the seemingly infinite reviews on Amazon — it doesn’t
seem like too many internet trolls frequent the store, but I could
be mistaken.

Hilary and Michael also highlighted the longevity and novelty

of the physical book, speaking with a reverence that is not
necessarily felt toward multi-decade-old e-readers or laptops. We
discussed the value of electronics when compared to books.

“They (electronics) lose their value and their purpose in a way

that a book doesn’t over time,” Hilary said.

“Yet they’re so expensive,” Michael added.
Michael also touched on the bookstore’s logo — a typewriter.
“Our logo is a typewriter that was based on a model my

grandmother gave me and it was my grandfather’s typewriter
from the 1930s; it still works,” he said. “I inherently don’t believe
that many of the e-reading devices in 80 years from now will
work. I can browse her bookshelves and find books from 100 years
ago and still read them. I inherently believe in physical paper
books being long-lasting, durable products that will be around for
hundreds of years.”

Keeping with the typewriter anecdote, it’s important to note

that in the basement section of Literati, where nonfiction books
are housed, there is a maroon Olympia typewriter available for
anyone to use. It wears a typewritten sign that says, “Please be
gentle with me. I’m old.”

It’s clear that there are emotional values and family histories

tied up in the business. Belief in the book is sustained with fervor.

“I have a book that was given to me on my 21st birthday and

the little inscriptions are handwritten in there,” Michael said.
“That’s meaningful to me, more than receiving a gift certificate
to Amazon. I think it’s just inherently believing in the future of
that, that made us both want to start the store and made us want
to keep going.”

Much of Literati’s success has depended on their engagement

with other small businesses and nonprofit groups in the area, as
well as their robust events calendar. For example, The Espresso
Bar subleases the second floor of the building from Literati. It
provides both businesses with larger space for people to read,
chat and work. It also serves as a spot for the bookstore to seat
audiences during readings and other literary events.

“They needed more space and we needed more space and

we don’t know coffee,” Michael said. “We know books and we
wanted a coffee shop but we didn’t have the expertise to do it so
we partnered with some of the best coffee baristas in town. It’s
been successful thus far.”

The coffee shop and bookstore work in healthy symbiosis. The

relaxing atmosphere of browsing the shelves is well supplemented
by a caffeine fix, and for coffee lovers who come to The Espresso
Bar, the spattering of signed new releases upstairs might be a
happy accident.

Hilary and Michael have also collaborated with organizations

such as Wolverine Press, a printing press run out of the University,
as well as other local and independent publishers, furthering a
commitment to community involvement and building healthy
relationships with local retailers. They also collaborate with
the University’s English department through the Zell Fellows
Reading Series.

“We try to work with a lot of University folks who have their

own books out, especially in the poetry department,” Michael said.

Literati even collaborated with a group of Engineering students

on a project, an example of one of the ways the store seeks to build
a relationship with the University.

“We had a group of Engineering students use us for one of their

projects to help us figure out ways to better make our store more
efficient because as bookstore people we’re not the most efficient
people sometimes. That was awesome because it allowed them to
get some insight into how a small business works and we got the
expertise of them as students,” Hilary said.

Hilary and Michael started Literati out of a love for the town

and a desire to contribute to its ethos of successful independent
businesses.

“We do it because we love this town and we want to make it

more vibrant,” Hilary said. “By partnering with other people you
reach a broader base. People can do something creative that may
not have been done before.”

“It takes a village to raise a bookstore,” Michael added.
He continued this with an analogy that compares the

cultivation of the Literati community to the experience of raising
a child. It seems fitting, as the bookstore was born shortly before
the owners got married.

“In the first six months, you’re just trying to make sure that

the child survives,” he said. “It’s a lot of sleepless and long nights
and worry and kinda freakin’ out and then it gets easier, and right
now this bookstore is sort of walking and talking and it’s getting
there and now instead of survival, we’re getting more into the
personality stage, doing more with the community and becoming
better community members.”

I left with an admiration for the ambition and integrity of the

store, and believe in the magic and importance of independent
bookstores, but I am still left with questions, reluctant to reduce
my interest in the economics of the bookselling to a polarizing
debate that pits the Amazons of the world against the Literatis.

Having a friendly and familiar local bookstore like Literati to

linger and explore is a treasure, but what about communities that
are limited in this respect and must rely on Amazon to read books
they want to read?

Maybe putting books alongside video games or hard-to-find

snack foods can draw in an audience that otherwise wouldn’t
have much of an interest, but what does the commodification of a
book do for writers who, as Packer puts it, are put “under pressure
to prove that their work produced sales?”

Maybe the world of commercial book sales is not even in the

same ballpark as the independent bookstore model. According
to Business Insider, Amazone tends to pursue detail-oriented
introverts who generally lacked well-developed interpersonal
skills as employees, a personality type that would most likely not
facilitate success in a social and community-based institution like
Literati.

Navigating the book world is complicated. It can force readers,

writers, business owners, artists, educators and editors to
question the benefits or obstacles in the evolution of bookselling.
It asks us to wonder what these changes suggest about the way we
value the creation and production of books. I am grateful to attend
school in a place where great literary culture is accessible. There
are bookstores that have allowed me to feel like the excitement
and spontaneity of discovering books and sharing that with other
people is alive and well. It gives me hope for those who lead lives
as artists, writers and educators who depend on the power of the
printed word and know what I mean when I talk about that nice
“old book” smell.

Literati
and the
renaissance
of
independent
bookselling

By Maria Robins-

Somerville, Daily Arts

Writer

PHOTOS BY ZOEY HOLMSTROM/Daily

LEFT: LSA sophomore Shannon Smith pulls “To Kill a Mockingbird” off the shelf at Literati Bookstore. RIGHT: LSA freshman Owen Hurley opens a pop-up book in the children’s section upstairs in Literati Bookstore.

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