INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORES LIVE!

So, the independent bookstore is not dead. At least not in Los Angeles. I visited Skylight Books in Los Feliz, Stories on Sunset in Echo Park, and Chevalier's Books on Larchmont for forthcoming articles for the Ledger papers, and found full stores with interesting stories and committed customers.

People still use libraries too. I was at the Silver Lake Library twice last week, and parents actually go with their kids and read from printed books, not iPads and Kindles.

I wasn't allowed the editorial space for all the photos and interesting bits about the stores, their ownership, and their strategy. The outtakes -


A longtime neighborhood hang, Skylight Books has been open since 2006, and owned by the same LLC. Some of the individual investors have changed out, but a core group continues to shepherd the store.

The resident cat, Franny, is very sweet. She just hangs out with customers all day. She is named for J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey.

The store is named for the diamond-shaped skylights that illuminate the store beautifully.

Skylight continues to engage community support with aggressive event planning both on- and off-site. Next in the pipeline is bringing children's book authors into elementary schools.



Chevalier's has only had three owners since 1940. Filis Winthrop took over from the Chevalier family in 1990, after 50 years of family ownership and operation. When two avid readers and local residents observed decreasing selection and difficulty with special orders last fall, they approached Winthrop to buy the store. One a lawyer and one a businessman, neither has ever owned a bookstore. One customer I talked to while visiting does not even know how long she's been going, but it's between 30 and 40 years. People who have lived in the neighborhood for that long run into and socialize with each other there. The store still has house accounts.


Stories on Sunset sits on Sunset Boulevard on the same block as Sage Vegan. The manager, Alex Maslansky, says they're doing well because it's a bookstore for locals. He was at Book Soup for seven years before Stories, and his belief is that good stores are a reflection of place. 



The customer is Eren Magri, who is about to open his own Echo Park business with The Semi-Tropic, a beer and wine bar on Glendale Boulevard at Montana Avenue. It was his first time in the store. It was not a conscious decision to patronize an independent bookstore, but he shops local. 


Stories' bottom line is bolstered by the café. Often full as it is here on a Thursday morning, it produces about half of the store's monthly revenue. 




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