On the Second Anniversary of 9/11, New York Booksellers Remember and Reflect
by Kevin Howell and Edward Nawotka, PW Daily for Booksellers -- Publishers Weekly, 9/12/2003
The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon continue to have a profound effect on Manhattan booksellers, particularly those in the lower half of the island.Bob Content, owner of the St. Mark's Bookstore in Greenwich Village, told PW Daily, "The obvious change has been the loss of tourist business. We don't have any foreign trade anymore making the effort to come to New York to buy books and ship back. In the past we were constantly shipping books out to customers all over the world. That doesn't happen anymore."
Content's store is below 14th Street, which was cordoned off from the rest of Manhattan for a week after the attacks. Elsewhere in Greenwich Village, Vincent Migliore, owner of the gay-lesbian bookstore Creative Visions, still feels the impact of that day. "This time two years ago we were standing outside the store watching a parade of dazed, soot-covered individuals walking past--we're about 15 blocks above the World Trade Center," he said.
"The day before 9/11, we'd had a staff meeting praising ourselves for being at our financial pinnacle and the next day we were in the middle of oceanic despair."
Migliore reported that many of his customers lost their jobs or were relocated and his "five o'clock rush just stopped." Today there has been little or no foot or car traffic past his store, he said, and it appears that many people are staying away from downtown.
All the evidence has made Migliore skeptical about the city's economic recovery: "This is the worst year we've had economically speaking since we opened in 1991," he told PW Daily. "And that goes for the stores around me. The city hasn't been happy and the media whips up the 9/11 scare stories constantly. There's no chance to heal because there is always a rehashing of events and new spins on threats to keep us watching the news. We're in better shape than many stores in our neighborhood that didn't have savings to fall back on. I predict this will be the first year we come out of this without a profit. Last year we were flat."
Uptown, Jeannette Watson, who took over ownership of Manhattan's Lenox Hill Bookstore (after successfully running the legendary Books and Co for 20 years) in August 2001, echoes Migliore's assessment of diminishing post 9/11 sales, but said she was inspired by the community's ability to bond in the midst of the chaos.
"Of course sales were terribly affected initially by 9/11," she told PW Daily. "But they picked up because people wanted to stay home more and read. People also started coming back within a week or so because they wanted to connect with people and have a friendly place to go to interact and talk with others and share feelings. We were trying to collect things for the firemen--clothes, money, food--so everyone in our community united in the store over that task."
Toby Cox, owner of Three Lives and Co. in Greenwich Village, is heartened by the onset of autumn. He said, "Things haven't been great but we're like everyone else: the war, weather and economy has made it a tough spring. In terms of getting back on our feet financially, it probably wasn't until the holidays jump-started us that we got back up to speed sales-wise. As always I look forward to the fall and enjoy getting excited about new books coming out. It's the second week of September and I feel like the big books are starting to come out now. The air is cooler, the leaves are getting brittle and it’s time to pack up and get some books. "
Though sales of titles directly about September 11 have fallen off, titles related to international relations and terrorism continue to hold the interest of customers.
Watson identified titles such as Jessica Stern's Terror in the Name of God (Ecco) and Bernard Lewis's books including What Went Wrong (Perennial) as strong sellers.
Content of St. Mark's Bookstore said that one of the bestselling titles of the last year at his store has been The National Security Strategy of the United States of America published by Winter House Editions ($5, distributed by SPD, ISBN 1884381170). He's sold 270 copies of the book since it was published in April. Other recent titles that have been selling at the store include Noam Chomsky's 9/11 and Power and Terror, (both Seven Stories) and Gore Vidal's Dreaming War and Perpetual War (both Thunder's Mouth).
At Creative Visions, Migliore told PW Daily that escapist material is moving. "We haven't lost our customer base but they're being conservative in their buying," he said. "There's no browsing. People want to get things really quick and go."
Migliore said he believes the economy has made customers sensitive to prices. "You can't increase the price on everything and not see a decline in buying," he said. "People will come to visit and ask, 'When will it come out in paperback?' It's nice that we'll see them in eight months, but in the meantime we have hardcovers sitting here. We sold a tremendous amount of Harry Potter, Katharine Hepburn and Hillary Clinton, but it just brought us up to break even. I think books are not recession-proof. Nothing is recession-proof."
