It seems only fitting that Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, would spawn a gay bookstore. Giovanni's Room, which also shares a tenacity with local hero Rocky Balboa, recently celebrated 30 years as one of the oldest gay/lesbian bookstores in the United States. PW decided to check in on the bookstore to find out how it continues to thrive during this period of transition and retrenchment for gay and lesbian publishing, when many of the other independent booksellers in this niche are tightening their belts and redefining their missions. Meanwhile, Giovanni's Room is still showing a profit, even with a Borders and a Barnes & Noble a few blocks away.
Ed Hermance, the affable native Texan who has owned the bookstore since 1976, has witnessed some revolutionary changes in both mainstream and gay and lesbian publishing in the past three decades. When the store opened in 1973, it housed 100 titles in 500 square feet of space. The entire store staff worked on a volunteer basis. "There weren't enough books to sell to pay anyone a salary," Hermance told PW.
After being kicked out of their building by a new landlord in 1979, Hermance and his business partner at the time, Arleen Olsham, borrowed funds from their patrons to purchase the building currently housing the store. "We had to. No one would rent to us; we were forced to buy—that was a lesson to us," Hermance declared. "And it's paid off," he added, looking around the spacious, light-filled store from his comfortable perch on the second floor.
Today, the store is 3,000 square feet, with an inventory of 12,000 titles on the shelf, an additional 37,000 titles in the store's database and two million titles available through distributors. "It used to be, we could stock everything. Now we couldn't possibly stock everything—there's just been so much published," Hermance said. He smiled remembering how Mark Segal, longtime publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News, wanted the just-opened Giovanni's Room to hold a copy of every book it received for him. "We could do it, but not for long," Hermance laughed. "He realized that this was going to get real expensive, real fast."
Giovanni's Room now employs three full-time and three part-time employees and several volunteers. One man has volunteered his time two days a week for the past 20 years; another volunteer comes in regularly to maintain the store's Web site (www.giovannisroom.com) and computer databases. The store maintains its Book Sense Web site for mail-order sales, and acts as a wholesaler for booksellers in Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
Domino Effect
Hermance recalled the emergence of a visible gay-lesbian culture in 1960s and '70s North America that resulted in a domino effect: gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender (GLBT) authors wrote books with GLBT themes; gay and lesbian bookstores opened to sell these books; and GLBT presses sprang up to publish more of these books. "We started with virtually nothing," said Hermance. "There was a vibrant gay/lesbian culture in Europe in the early 20th century that was almost destroyed during the Nazi period. There was no gay or lesbian literature being published in those days. There were no books at all. You had to read Plato or Walt Whitman or go look at Greek sculptures. Now, gay and lesbian literature is so rich. We have come so far in the past 25 years—though we have a long way to go before we exhaust the topics that have to be written about.
"This store was born of the '60s radical hippie movement," Hermance continued. "It was created to fulfill our needs as gays and lesbians." Hermance considers the emergence in the 1970s of gay and lesbian presses such as Naiad and Alyson an essential component in this growing movement. "Those presses were so strong and creative in those days," he recalled. "The big publishers didn't know or care about gay publishing, so people like [Naiad co-founder] Barbara Grier stepped in to supply books to those of us wanting to sell books about our lives. Barbara sold books through the force of her personality."
According to Hermance, novels featuring gay and lesbian protagonists coming to terms with their sexuality were most popular with store patrons in the 1970s. City of Night by John Rechy (Grove), Giovanni's Room (the 1956 classic novel for which the bookstore was named) by James Baldwin (Delta), The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal (Vintage) and Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown (Bantam) were the store's earliest bestsellers. "People read these novels like nonfiction, because the point of view reflected their experience. These novels fed the imaginations of gay and lesbian readers. We could imagine what was possible—what life could be like—in these books." Hermance added, "Gay literature was coming into its own. Within a few years after its 1973 publication, Rubyfruit Jungle had sold 30,000 copies—just through word of mouth."
These days, the monthly list of the top-selling gay and lesbian books at Giovanni's Room is a lot more eclectic and wide-ranging. Offerings from small gay, lesbian and feminist publishers, literary presses, university presses, even the larger Manhattan publishing houses are all represented. Bestsellers include everything from The Secret Lives of Married Men: Interviews with Gay Men Who Played It Straight by David Leddick (Alyson) to Love in Good Time: A Memoir by Claire Robson (Michigan State Univ. Press), to Twilight Girls by Paula Christian (Kensington) to Lives of the Circus Animals by Christopher Bram (Morrow).
"There's so much more variety on our shelves now," said Hermance. "We received 114 new titles into the store in the month of November alone."
Tough Times
It's been tough going for GLBT and feminist booksellers in the past several years. Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York City almost closed last year, saved only by the intervention of Deacon Maccubbin, owner of the Lambda Rising bookstores (Bookselling, Mar. 10, 2003). A Different Light in New York City, A Brother's Touch in Minneapolis and, most recently, My Sister's Words in Syracuse have all shut their doors in the past few years. Amazon Bookstore Coop in Minneapolis almost went out of business last year, after unexpectedly being socked with a whopping property tax bill (Bookselling, Oct. 13, 2003).
In contrast, Giovanni's Room posted $425,000 in sales for this fiscal year (as of November 30), plus $19,000 in mail order sales, and $16,000 in sales through its wholesaling operations. Hermance said that sales this past fiscal year were 5% below sales for the last fiscal year, but profits were up because he reduced and streamlined staff positions.
Hermance attributes the success of Giovanni's Room during these turbulent times to three factors: inventory, expertise and community support. He considers the bookstore's Web site an absolute necessity for maintaining the store's financial strength. "You can't have a great bookstore without having a great Web site," he said. "A great Web site generates orders." The store also entices customers by offering everyday, in-store 10% discounts on trade hardcovers and holding a pre-inventory sale each January. The bookstore provides patrons with extensively annotated lists of select books and videos recommended by store personnel who clearly know their stuff. Everything in the store seems to be geared towards educating, entertaining and enticing the customer.
"We own our building," Hermance said. "Our only problem is operating expenses. Barnes & Noble and Borders have to pay rent as well as operating expenses. The chains have to focus on the bottom line, on what sells. That's not what we're doing. We're trying to provide a service, and in the process, we're selling books. We can and do have more gay/lesbian books in stock than the chains could possibly ever carry.
"We carry both books and products that sell and books and products that are important but don't necessarily sell," he continued. "There are certain books that we feel that we have to have, and there are others we'd like to have, but can't—so we strike a balance in what we carry. Our customers know that if they are buying bumper stickers, they are supporting something like the video It's Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School. We're not selling a lot of copies of this video, but the fact that it's even available in Philly at all is important."
Changes Along the Way
But the phenomenal growth of the chain bookstores in the 1990s has had a significant impact on independent booksellers across the United States, including Giovanni's Room. Hermance cites collaborations with other organizations serving Philly's gay and lesbian community as an essential piece of the store's continuing success. "The local gay media is extremely supportive of us," said Hermance. "The Philadelphia Gay News reviews books and interviews authors and runs the articles right before our events. Building relationships with such like-minded organizations is key to bringing new customers into the store."
This commitment to building alliances with other organizations serving the GLBT market probably accounts for the overwhelming support for Giovanni's Room in and beyond Philly's gay/lesbian community. Philadelphia's Convention & Visitors Bureau has budgeted $900,000 over the next several years to promote the City of Brotherly Love to gay and lesbian tourists, and Hermance is a consultant on the advertising campaign. "That kind of support from the city is really helpful to us. If we can get people from out of town to visit us, that really drives our sales. Tourists just love the store; they can't believe how many books we have."
Looking to the Future
Unlike many in the industry, Hermance does not see the recent changes in GLBT publishing and bookselling as a negative phenomenon, but, rather, as an inevitable changing of the guard. As the stigma about publishing and stocking gay-themed books faded over the last decade, readers didn't need to seek out specialty stores. They could find most of their reading material at large chain stores—often at discount prices. "A generational thing may also be happening with gay and lesbian publishers and booksellers," he said. "After a while, that radical youthful energy that characterized the '70s, '80s, and '90s hits that barrier of reality. Do you really want to pinch pennies for the rest of your life?
"I'm hoping that the younger generation—if they want to make more money publishing or selling gay and lesbian books—will be able to figure out how to do so," Hermance added. "After all, Bella Books, Alyson Publications and Cleis Press are still chugging along."
Hermance sees cause for optimism about the state of GLBT publishing and bookselling in 21st-century America. "I'm impressed that teens and people in their 20s are coming into the store," he said. "It's really super that young people find value in an institution that wasn't created for them, but was created 30 years ago for gays and lesbians living in a very different world. Because young people use the store as much as they do and we have such a solid customer base, I anticipate that Giovanni's Room will be around for a long time."
