More than 25 years after Jonathon Welch opened Talking Leaves Books in Buffalo, N.Y., with a group of fellow graduate students and funds borrowed from friends, he is about to take the leap again by opening a second store three miles away. "We discussed opening a second store for years," said Welch, who now co-owns the stores with his wife, Martha Russell.

Last year, the owner of Cafe Aroma, a coffee shop on the west side of Buffalo, approached Welch when an adjoining space became available. After months of discussion, Welch decided to go ahead with the second location, where customers would be able to enjoy the combination of bookstore and coffee shop.

Talking Leaves Elmwood, scheduled to open in mid-June, will fill a gap left by the Village Green, when the defunct Rochester-based chain closed several years ago. The bookstore has joined other independent retailers, including a record store, another coffee shop and a bread bakery, in the revitalization of this neighborhood.

Like the first store, Talking Leaves Elmwood has been financed by loans from 20 to 30 community members, educators, lawyers, musicians and local activists. The loans range from $10,000 to $60,000. One lender is Dr. Elizabeth Conant, a retired biology professor, who has been a customer of Talking Leaves since 1978. The shelves of the current store are "packed with unusual, progressive books," she said. "The new store is a great idea. It will anchor the community." Dr. Hank Bromley, an associate professor at the State University of New York—Buffalo's Department of Educational Leadership and Policy, believes that large retail chains have damaged American culture and urban life. "I want to help one excellent bookstore stay alive," he told PW.

Another lender is Scot Fisher, president of Righteous Babe Records and personal manager to singer Ani DiFranco. Like Welch, Fisher is committed to doing business in Buffalo and supporting community revival. He became a patron as a college student when he lived upstairs from the original Talking Leaves (in an earlier location). In later years, as he traveled around the country, he noted, "I was surprised that every city doesn't have a great independent bookstore. I want to be part of a community that supports a bookstore like Talking Leaves."

According to Welch, his business obtained a bank commitment, but may not need to use it. Community support also came from Mayor Anthony Masiello and State Assembly Member Sam Hoyt, who both live in the neighborhood.

The original Talking Leaves Books began as a cooperative, when Welch and fellow SUNY graduate students created it in 1975, changing its status to a corporation three years later. During the 1970s, the store provided an alternative to dominant retailing chains like Waldenbooks. The store stocked poetry, literary criticism, philosophy, anthropology, sociology and books with African-American or gay/lesbian perspectives.

Talking Leaves Books moved twice on the same block in the university district, just a few blocks from SUNY Buffalo. Seven years ago, it opened in its current location with 3,000 square feet, three times its original space. In spite of shifts in the marketplace, Talking Leaves Books still lives up to its vision of being independent and idiosyncratic. "We always want to be independent of trends, independent of norms," said Welch.

The shop has broadened its range of commercial fiction and nonfiction to meet customer needs, but it still features books "with a strong academic bent," according to Welch. Among its 55,000 to 75,000 titles, perennial best sellers include The I Ching (Princeton University Press), One Hundred Years of Solitude (HarperPerennial) by Gabriel García Márquez and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Bantam) by Robert Pirsig. Customers favor works by such authors as Carl Jung, Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Brautigan, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange and Leslie Silko, many of whom appealed to earlier generations of readers. Poetry continues to do well, including works by Black Mountain poets Robert Creeley, a Buffalo resident, and Charles Olson, who taught at the university in the early 1960s. Book-buying decisions are made by Welch, with input from Russell and store manager Lucy Kogler.

The store also features magazines that "reflect the quirkiness of the stock," Welch said, and cover literature, politics, film and cultural interests. These publications are not ad-driven and have small circulations.

The new, 2,000-square-foot store, which will stock 30,000 titles, will have fewer academic and scholarly works, reflecting its proximity to Buffalo State College, which is less research and theory focused than SUNY Buffalo. It will also carry more mainstream magazines, such as the New Yorker, to appeal to the coffee-shop crowd.

Changing Landscape

Over the past 25 years, the city of Buffalo has changed, losing about a third of its population as manufacturers closed down. The North Buffalo neighborhood around the original Talking Leaves Books has seen the closing of drugstores, dry cleaners and other bookstores, leaving mostly restaurants. SUNY Buffalo itself moved many of its schools to the suburbs, leaving only the medical, dental and architecture schools.

"A good chunk of our customers are still academics, but some of our best customers for academic books are not professors or students," said Welch. He explained that while it's difficult to characterize Talking Leaves' customers, they do seem to have one thing in common. "They are all people who have a relatively serious interest in reading."

Another area of change is the competition. Most of Buffalo's other independents closed in the 1970s. In the metropolitan area, there are two Barnes & Nobles, one Borders Books and Music, five MediaPlay stores and one small African-American independent. The independent stores that occasionally opened in the suburbs have not endured. Talking Leaves is one of the only general-interest independents remaining in the Buffalo area. Welch believes some customers shop on Amazon, but it's difficult for him to gauge the impact on store sales. "Talking Leaves had some flat years, but sales never went down during the superstore and Amazon boom," he said.

Following Welch's belief that stores should make things simple for customers, Talking Leaves has adhered to a few, straightforward marketing techniques over the years. Since its inception as a cooperative, customers have become members by paying $5 a year to obtain a 10% discount on purchases. There are currently 3,500—4,000 members.

Though the store does not offer across-the-board discounts, it has periodically featured special one- to two-week sales connected to events like Black History Month, International Women's Month and National Poetry Month in April. Also, Talking Leaves puts some books on sale before returning unsold issues to publishers or wholesalers, or just before the paperback edition of a hardcover book is published.

Over the years, Talking Leaves has developed a strong connection to the community. It has co-sponsored readings, workshops and school programs with local organizations and institutions such as Just Buffalo Literary Center, Canisius College, HallsWalls Art Gallery, SUNY Buffalo and public schools. Recent in-store and off-site readings have featured novelist Tim O'Brien, Alaskan fiddling poet Ken Waldman, local professor/poet Charles Bernstein and writer David Sedaris. Talking Leaves donates 20% of its out-of-store sales to co-sponsoring organizations.

"We've faced immense challenges," said Welch, reflecting on the store's history. "It's always a marginal business. It gives you resilience and a visceral understanding of being marginal. It teaches you how to better react to adversity." He has learned that conventional business rules do not always work in the retail bookstore business.

Now, with the support of his customers and community, Welch is opening Talking Leaves Elmwood and is eager to once again realize his vision of an independent, idiosyncratic bookstore.