Shoppers of John’s Tex-Mex in the South Wedge normally get their tacos and burritos with a aspect of refried beans or mashed potatoes. On a current Saturday, they obtained a aspect of indie lit, as well.
Nestled in a back again corner of the restaurant, past clusters of patrons gorging on guacamole, was a pop-up bookstore fashioned out of a small desk displaying a few dozen books — novels, essays, and poetry, generally from tiny presses and worldwide authors.
The show was the do the job of Akimbo Textbooks, a local online bookseller that specializes in contemporary literature and has made a workaround to paying for a brick-and-mortar store by staging pop-up outlets. In the method, it seeks to reintroduce what is a rarity in Rochester’s literary landscape nowadays: new titles.
“I feel people today are experiencing things yet again and literature is a massive part of that,” explained Akimbo Guides founder Rachel Crawford, who tended the pop-up at John’s Tex-Mex.
The increase of large-box bookstore chains like Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Waldenbooks battered unbiased bookstores in the 1990s. Indies have because been rendered an endangered species by Amazon. Most that continue to be, at least in the city, focus in utilised guides, initial editions, and really hard-to-uncover titles.
But independent booksellers carrying new titles are not extinct, and are getting progressive methods to get their wares in entrance of individuals without the need of paying a dime for retail area at a time when renting a storefront is a precarious proposition.
Although 2020 was a excellent 12 months for publishers, it devastated bookstores. Publishers Weekly lately described that bookstore income fell 28 percent from 2019, citing preliminary estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Independent bookstores had it even worse, with some outlets reporting to the American Booksellers Association very last year that their revenue experienced dropped 40 per cent.
“Independent bookstores were hit tough by the pandemic,” said Dan Cullen of the American Booksellers Association.
But, he claimed, there were indications of daily life. Cullen pointed to data that proposed there were being 42 new bookstore openings nationwide, and affiliation customers documented that on line profits jumped 630 p.c final year.
“Hundreds of stores pivoted and identified new strategies to assistance their communities and unfold their adore of books,” Cullen mentioned.
Unbiased booksellers like Crawford imagine viewers are a lot less most likely to explore a great new e book although purchasing online than in a bookstore, pop-up or normally. Amazon can create new algorithms, but it cannot replicate the joys of searching or the human conversation between guide consumers and educated sellers.
“What’s the very last film that you viewed that you actually loved?” Crawford questioned. “Was it a Marvel movie? Or was it some thing tremendous area of interest and global? I have both equally of these to bounce about with you. What kind of artwork do you like? What eras do you like? All those help stage individuals in a route that they may possibly uncover a e book they fall in really like with.”
Her defiance of a brutal market that has all but eaten compact booksellers is reflected in the title of her business enterprise. Arms “akimbo” signifies to stand with fingers on hips, elbows pointed outward — that pose of feminine empowerment struck by icons like Ponder Woman and “Fearless Girl” of Wall Street.
Akimbo is not alone in its David-and-Goliath pursuit.

 Independent bookseller Taylor Thomas, of Rochester, has taken a comparable solution, offering books on-line and at smaller pop-up situations all over town. Her enterprise, The Secondhand Librarian, commenced as a way of downsizing her very own reserve assortment and morphed into a full-time task of on the web revenue and situations.
“I supply guides that I have loved,” Thomas stated at a current pop-up at the Luna Collective at the Hungerford Setting up. “Definitely much more common titles like, ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ or ‘Little Fires Everywhere,’ but also more obscure publications that I just want all people to go through so I can communicate about them.”
Superior bookstores are by mother nature subversive, supplying performs outdoors the mainstream about love and dying and battle and liberation and humanity.
Crawford’s show at John’s Tex-Mex involved “Home,” a limited anthology of poetry translated from Arabic “Limitless Summertime,” a appreciate tragedy composed by Danish transgender writer Madame Nielsen and published by Rochester’s Open Letter Publications and publications from Black authors about problematic white feminism, like “White Tears/Brown Scars” by Ruby Hamad.
“I want it to have a radical character to it,” Crawford stated of her store. “But I want it to have almost everything.”
There were being gains to opening a bookstore in a taco store on a Saturday. Other than the foot targeted visitors, the restaurant was serving pitchers of mimosa in which Crawford and her supporters happily imbibed.
A couple of patrons, primarily pals and proven shoppers of Akimbo, walked into the eatery and past the decide on-up counter for the pop-up bookstore.
“There’s almost nothing like a e-book,” claimed a single of Crawford’s regulars, Bob Scheffel. He was flipping by means of pages of his modern order, “Big Girl” by Meg Ellison, a science fiction comedy writer. “There’s very little like the smell of a ebook, the come to feel of a ebook.”
Many of Crawford’s buyers are intentional about how and from whom they obtain their books. Despite the fact that their titles may be out there from on-line vendors, they want to assistance a nearby seller.

 Crawford established Akimbo Guides in 2016, but opened it in earnest previous calendar year soon after she lost her career at a bookstore for the duration of the pandemic. Her web page originally concentrated on publishing e-book reviews, but finally moved into selling books.
In addition to popping-up and posting reserve opinions, Akimbo hopes to host e book golf equipment and publish interviews Crawford does with authors. Crawford, who holds a master’s degree in English from the College of Rochester, has written on a freelance basis for City.
“Sound like a whole lot all rolled into a person?” Crawford asks of her ambitions on the Akimbo site. “Well, that’s what happens when mania festers in a nine-month quarantine. Due to the fact, well, it’s been a working day this 12 months.”
Rochester’s e-book market place hardly ever fully recovered from the beating it took from the chain merchants a era in the past and, later, on line retail. But some have held on.
Prolonged-standing employed bookstores like Little Entire world Guides provide those with a adore of the classics. Yesterday’s Muse features rare textbooks, such as signed first editions. Impartial bookstores in Clifton Springs and Brockport remain a vacation spot for city-dwellers on the lookout for a community shop with newer titles.
But a handful of indie bookstores have opened regionally in modern several years.
Hippocampo, positioned on South Avenue, is a regional woman- and Latinx-owned kid’s bookstore that has been in company for three many years. Cerebral Kingdom opened on Condition Avenue in August of 2020 with a collection of textbooks about the Black experience, from lifestyle and record to spirituality and children’s publications.
Neighborhood literary hub Writers & Books opened its have bookstore, Ampersand, in the tumble of 2019. It operated out of the center’s residence on College Avenue until finally the pandemic pressured it on the net.
Alison Meyers, the executive director of Writers & Books, owned her individual bookstore in Connecticut prior to coming to Rochester a number of many years back. She also managed the bookstore at Oberlin College or university in Ohio additional than 20 yrs ago.
“Things have altered a ton since I did that do the job,” she mentioned.
Competitiveness in the reserve current market grew to become fierce, downtowns in numerous city centers were being hollowed out, communal spaces languished.
But, Meyers claimed, a renewed concentration on downtowns and own connectivity — the lifeblood of standard unbiased books merchants — has provided her hope.
“I see a excellent renaissance of the compact press and indie bookstores,” she claimed.
Veronica Volk is a reporter for WXXI News, a media spouse of Metropolis.

 
