Last month, the New York Press raised some eyebrows when its 14th annual "Best of Manhattan" issue named Brooklyn's 7th Ave. Books as Best Bookstore. Considering the competition in New York, that's quite an accomplishment—especially for a bookstore that just opened in August.
"It's astounding to be open just two months and be named Best Bookstore," said owner Tom Simon, who is no stranger to publishing. A former v-p at B&N.com, Simon also worked with book database pioneer Muze and was a senior v-p of Encore Books. He also was an executive with Brentano's Bookstores and manager of the New Canaan Book Shop, New Canaan, Conn.
Simon signed the lease on his 900-square-foot location on July 3 with only "a couple hundred books of my own to sell." He posted 200 fliers on lamp posts, telling the Park Slope community that he'd be opening a used bookstore and was interested in buying books. "I thought it would take until the end of August to get an inventory for the store," Simon told PW. "But this is a huge reading community and by the time we opened, we had about 12,000 individual volumes. A large part of the credit for this award goes to the people of Park Slope who gave us the inventory. Business has been brisk and customers have been overwhelmingly positive."
Simon and manager David Graham aren't concerned that their bookstore is literally in the shadow of a B&N superstore a block and a half away. "People who live in Park Slope are very proud of the little shops here and were very upset when B&N moved in," Graham told PW. "I think they appreciate that we're a serious bookstore, we read and know books."
"Our philosophy is keep the prices really low," said Simon. "Our store is like a river, the content is always changing but the look and feel stays the same, reflecting the environment around it."
