Specialties & Gratitude

Hey, pals,

We’ve got exciting upcoming things to tell you about, but first, we want to remind you we’ll be closed not only this Thursday, November 28, but this Friday, November 29.

Why are we closing a retail business on Black Friday? Well, for one thing, if you go by our inboxes, it’s already been Black Friday for about three weeks. When Thanksgiving comes late, capitalism can bend time, apparently? We’re done with our Black Friday shopping, and we’re not even there yet.

Really, though, we’re closing because Black Friday has nothing to do with us. We are not in the doorbuster business, to say the least. Our biggest-ticket items are a handful of new art books in the $45-$65 range.

Most of our stock is priced well under $10 every day; in here, it’s always Black Friday. So, instead of vying for the big boxes’ sloppy seconds on the ugliest day in retail, we’ll rest up for our designated turn at your year-end dollars: Small Business Saturday, November 30. 

Listen, we trust that if you’re reading this, you’re acquainted with all the good reasons to shop small and local. And we always hope you’ll come see us just because we’re charming and attractive. But if you still need an extra nudge, this Saturday, all new books are 20% off!

Tell Me More About Those New Books

New customers often ask if we specialize in something, and the honest but unhelpful answer is: Yep, stuff we like. We know it when we see it—and you will, too, after a lap around the store.

If you’ve brought in books to trade, you know we take our time assessing each one individually. Believe it or not, we do the same when faced with thousands of books at a library sale or similar source of potential new stock. (Ask Kate’s husband how long he’s waited for her to finish scouting, when he thought they were just making a quick stop.) Our used selection represents hours upon hours of sifting through possibilities, so when customers compliment our curation, it means the world to us.

If you really want to know what we like, though, you need to check out the new books. They’re a smaller percentage of our overall stock, but they represent even more deliberate choices.

Shopping Small on Small

Our most notable choice was deciding to focus on small and academic presses that don’t often get much shelf space, even in other independent stores. There are a few exceptions (mostly for hyperlocal authors and dear friends of the store who have books with major publishers), but eschewing the “Big Five” and their big books means we can feature more independent publishers like Exact Change, Flood Editions, The Song Cave, New Directions, Arsenal Pulp, The 3rd Thing, The Feminist Press, Haymarket Books, and so many others.

It means Kate can make a whole display of reproductive justice books and another with most of Percival Everett’s pre-fame novels, while quietly ensuring Canadian authors are wildly overrepresented. It means Michael can bring in not one but two brand new books about masked hip-hop artists who died too young, choose more new poetry than a lot of stores three times our size, and order ten books from the African Poetry Book Fund Series after talking to a customer about one of them. It means that if you ask, one or both of us should be able to tell you exactly why a given new title made it to our shelves.

Buying anything here supports your friendly local booksellers, and we couldn’t be more grateful for every dime. (Have we mentioned our new $1 clearance section?) We’ll just add that buying new titles also supports wonderful small publishers and their authors (who don’t get a cut of the second, third, or twelfth sales of their books on the used market). If our new books are usually a bit out of your price range, we really hope you’ll come in on Saturday and check them out.

See you soon,

Kate and Michael

P.S. You might also want to mark your calendar for:

Shop Jarvis Square on Saturday, December 7, when local makers set up shop inside local businesses. We’ll be hosting artist Gigi Droop, who will have prints, zines, and art books for sale!

Rogers Bark’s Pet Pictures with Santa Day at Jarvis Square Tavern on Saturday, December 14. We have absolutely nothing to do with this. Kate just really hopes you’ll bring your dogs by the store on your way to or from.