Former Borders bookseller Kate Layte, who has been associate production editor at Little, Brown in Boston for the past four years, is opening a new bookstore, Papercuts, JP, in the Jamaica Plain section of the city in November.
Papercuts, JP will be the only dedicated general bookstore in Jamaica Plain. The area is also home to Lucy Parsons Center, a radical bookstore/community space; Boston Book Company and Book Annex, an antiquarian bookstore; and Tres Gatos, a tapas restaurant and book and music store.
“It’s going to be small, 500 sq. ft.,” says Layte, “I want it to have a really good selection of fiction and nonfiction, and books that don’t translate well into e-books like graphic novels.” She is also planning a small, carefully culled section of children’s books.
The store has been in the planning stages for the past two years. Layte has been taking free online classes in marketing and accounting at Wharton through Coursera and working closely with the Small Business Administration and SCORE to develop a business plan. She has also been getting help from Newtonville Books founder Tim Huggins, controller and treasurer at Brookline Booksmith in Brookline, Mass.
Jamaica Plain, where the store will open, has a strong literary tradition and since posting an announcement on Facebook, Layte says that local authors have begun reaching out to her about doing events.
This section of Boston also serves as the final resting place for many well-known writers, including Anne Sexton, e.e. cummings, Khalil Gibran, and Eugene O’Neill.
