Although the 2024 election season won’t shift into high gear until after Labor Day, booksellers across the country are making plans for what Lissa Muscatine, co-owner of Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C., describes as a “dramatic and historic” presidential campaign. Not only are booksellers eager to sell hot new releases about politics and political personalities but some, especially in swing states, are strategizing on how best to educate and engage citizens of all ages.
Noting that Washington is “a political town” and “a lot of political people” shop at P&P, including the Clintons, Obamas, and Kamala Harris, Muscatine emphasizes the impact of current events on P&P’s programming. In 2016, she recalls, P&P hosted presidential debate-watching parties. “People showed up for those,” she says, adding that staff is contemplating a variation on that approach this fall, “maybe an election night watch party.”
P&P is maintaining “significant display tables” in the front area of its three outlets, as well as “big” window displays. Its fall event roster is heavy on the hot-button topics that voters are thinking about, with stops by such authors as Amanda Becker (You Must Stand Up: The Fight for Abortion Rights in Post-Dobbs America; Bloomsbury, Sept.); David Daley (Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections; Mariner, Aug.); and Mary Anne Franks (Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment; Bold Type, Oct.).
Although Philadelphians generally vote Democratic, the City of Brotherly Love is in a key swing state, and several bookstores there are actively working on voter education and registration. Before the state’s spring presidential primary, Big Blue Marble Bookstore featured such voter information as registration deadlines in its store newsletter. “I intend to revive that this fall,” says general manager Jennifer Woodfin. There’s a “VOTE” sign in the front window, and staffers hope to hand out voter registration forms, as they’ve done in previous years. Recalling that the store’s 2016 “nasty women” window display went viral, Woodfin hopes that bookstore staff can put together another provocative display to “get the neighborhood’s attention” this fall.
“I don’t hesitate to chat with coworkers and customers about voting,” Woodfin says. “Our store has a Pride flag hung outside and is known to be a source of books for queer families. Our customers know which side we’re on.”
Harriett’s Bookshop owner Jeannine Cook says she is “taking a strong stance on the concept of the vote.” Black-owned Harriett’s is working closely with Vote That Jawn, a nonpartisan organization founded by author Lorene Carey to educate Philly youth about the political process, register them to vote, and “more importantly, push the importance of what to do beyond your vote” as a responsible community member, she notes.
Cook emphasizes that booksellers must lean into civic engagement as well: “Booksellers need to be thinking together about what policies we’d like to collectively see created or destroyed by the next administration, to best ensure the success and longevity of our vocation.”
In Easton, Pa., near Allentown, Book & Puppet Co. owner Andy Laties says his corner of Pennsylvania is “an important swing district that most recently is polling for Donald Trump,” after Joe Biden prevailed there in 2020. Election-year programming features retired TV journalist Melba Tolliver leading a biweekly series of hour-long community conversations addressing such topical issues as media polls and whether senior citizens should run for office. “I’ve used the presidential election as part of my bookstore programming since 1987, 1988,” Laties notes.
Michigan swings
Detroit is another Democratic stronghold in a swing state, and indies there are strategizing on how to best engage voters. While 27th Letter Books is focused on advocating for local libraries this year, co-owner Andrew Pineda says that the store also provides activist groups with a safe space to meet. In suburban Oak Park, the Book Beat’s co-owner, Colleen Kammer, is willing to organize get-out-the-vote postcard-writing parties, after hours in the store, if customers want to participate. “This is something that is doable, and it’s positive,” she said. “People can hang out with like-minded people and do something together. It’ll cost money for postage, but it’s well worth it. We’re not wasting our money and we’ll know that we’ve done something.”
Beyond the Detroit metro area, Tom Lowry, owner of Lowry’s Books in Three Rivers and in Sturgis, says he’s stocking more political books this fall, especially children’s books “on what the election is and why it’s important.” He’ll prominently display books including the 2024 edition of What Is a Presidential Election? by Douglas Yacka and Presidential Elections and Other Cool Facts: Understanding How Our Country Picks Its President by Syl Sobel, and he’ll take these and other options to the many western Michigan book fairs where Lowry’s sells books.
Unlike the other Michigan booksellers who spoke with PW, Jessilyn Norcross, co-owner of McLean & Eakin in Petoskey, says the store will stock political books this fall but won’t put them on special display. Nor will the store actively engage with customers regarding politics and the election, because, she explains, those conversations rarely ended well in previous election years.
“We don’t want to create conflict,” she says, noting that Petoskey is in a rural area in northern Michigan that’s “purple” this year. “We want to make the store available to people on either side to meet. We want to keep the discussion as open as possible, but we also want to stay out of firing range.”
Other battleground states
Bound to Happen Books in Stevens Point, Wis., is, like McLean & Eakin, located in a rural area in a swing state. Co-owner Lyn Ciurro says the store “has been pretty quiet on this front so far,” and it’s partnering with local organizations to get out the vote for local and state contests beyond the presidential main event. “The broader focus is definitely, obviously, on the presidential election. But there are other important issues to Wisconsin residents like referenda and the state assembly and the U.S. Senate.”
Left Bank Books in St. Louis is another indie in a city that votes Democratic—but unlike Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, Missouri consistently lands in the red column elections. That does not deter owner Kris Kleindienst, who celebrated her 50th anniversary as a bookseller last month.
“Our main thing this election is to get people motivated to vote,” Kleindienst says. “A lot of people don’t bother voting because they aren’t thrilled with anybody running, or they don’t feel as if their vote counts. We’re not telling people who to vote for: we’re telling them why to vote and how to vote.”
Left Bank will include voter information in its weekly newsletter until election day, and is partnering with local organizations like Action St. Louis and Missouri Voter Protection to hold teach-ins at the store about voters’ rights and related topics, as well as to register voters.
Of course, Left Bank’s inventory remains a high priority during an election year in this mission-driven store, and Kleindienst says she has “high hopes” for Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom (Crown, Sept.). She has also restocked Kamala Harris’s 2019 memoir, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, and intends to keep plenty of other politically oriented backlist on hand, particularly books like Heather Cox Richardson’s Democracy Awakening and Sarah Kendzior’s They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent.
“Richardson and Kendzior are our mainstays, because they tell it like it is, in plain language,” Kleindienst says. “We’ve already seen an uptick in interest in politics and social issue nonfiction. It had quieted down as it always does during a Democratic administration, at least in my experience as a bookseller, but now it’s going up again.”
