BENGALURU: At a 2017 talk, in response to a question about how to contribute to the local community, author Ann Patchett advised: “If you can, open a bookstore.” In the audience was Jhoanna Belfer, a Filipina American poet from Long Beach, California, who worked in hospitality. She left, inspired. The following year, she opened Bel Canto Books, named after Patchett’s breakthrough novel. Bel Canto was among an increasing number of bookstores in the US owned by women and Persons of Colour (PoC).
Patchett is called the “patron saint of independent bookstores”. In 2011 in Nashville, she started Parnassus Books which partly owes its fantastic success to her success as a blockbuster author (The Dutch House; Tom Lake). She hardly fit the image of a typical bookseller, someone who spends all day in the shop and all night worrying about it. And that’s because she partnered with Karen Hayes, who knew the book business, while she put in the money and her brand.
Ann Patchett wasn’t the first author to become a bookseller. The Bookshop by Evan Friss gives you a history of the leading figures in American bookselling. Benjamin Franklin was a printer, bookseller, and writer. In the 1950s, Lawrence Ferlinghetti (A Coney Island of the Mind) started City Lights Bookstore. In the 1970s, Larry McMurtry (Terms of Endearment) got into the antiquarian book trade.
In the 21st century’s very different bookselling ecosystem, some of the successful author-owned bookstores are: Jeff Kinney’s (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) An Unlikely Story, in Plainville, Massachusetts; Judy Blume’s (Are Your There God, It’s Me, Margaret) Key West branch of Books and Books; and Emma Straub’s (Modern Lovers) Books are Magic, in Brooklyn.
When author and bibliophile Pradeep Sebastian (The Groaning Shelf) reached out to Krishna Gowda and me with the idea of opening an antiquarian section at Bookworm that would offer rare and fine books, I jumped with excitement. We’d been having this conversation for a decade, about the lack of antiquarian (not secondhand) bookstores in India.
Now with Pradeep returning from the US, it felt like the perfect time to turn our dream into reality. Krishna knew the books business, Pradeep wanted to contribute with his time, knowledge and his collection of fine press books, and I was eager to throw in my own collection of signed, limited editions as well as the initial investment.
We’ve dubbed this adventure ‘The Antiquarian Bookworm’, and our stock in trade will be finely produced books, rare editions, and modern signed books. And since we also share a love of books about books, we have devoted an entire section to this very bibliophilic genre. And I am glad to say that in six months we’ve been able to open The Antiquarian Bookworm for business on Church Street.
Bookstores are unlike any other retail shop. They are cultural landmarks where financial profit is secondary to social profit. A neighbourhood without an independent bookstore is a body without a heart. The Antiquarian Bookworm is an extension of the already significant role Bookworm has played in the community. And so, we’re building a new heart and strengthening the independent bookstore culture with an antiquarian/rare book section, in the book capital of India, Bengaluru.
There are plenty of bookshops in India for bibliophiles but very few for collectors. Since we don’t have a culture of book collecting, there is no rare book market to speak of, with just a couple of antiquarian bookstores and auction houses in the entire country. To get a taste for collecting, Bengaluru bibliophiles should have the opportunity to walk into a bookshop and handle rare and fine books themselves. One hopes The Antiquarian Bookworm will offer them that exciting experience.
Bookshops are also endangered. For independent bookstores to survive, it’s not enough to offer occasional support. Fans need to buy ALL their books from local bookstores!