[upbeat music] Welcome back to Taste Land. I am Francis Zehrer. And I'm Daisy Alioto. Daisy, who are we speaking with today? Today we're speaking with James Webster.
He's the co-owner of Recluse Books in Dallas/Fort Worth, which is an indie bookstore that he started with his wife, Josie.
And he previously worked in book marketing for Deep Vellum, Dalkey Archive, Seven Stories, and other presses that you might have heard of.
I have actually been wanting to learn a bit about the, what it takes to run a bookstore recently. I think we talked about this a couple weeks ago.
I brought it up, and we're gonna probably talk about it in the episode too, but my favorite local bookstore in my hometown burned down. And so the economics of running a bookstore have been weighing on my mind recently.
I think it's a dream for a lot of people, but the reality is, uh, quite difficult. Mm-hmm. And I'm sure that we'll get into that.
And [laughs] I- before we jumped on, I asked you if you'd done anything Italian lately, and you said you're watching the Olympics, which are in Milan. Uh, I- And Cortina. Don't forget Cortina. Sorry. My... How could I?
[laughs] Um, I, [laughs] Ben and I started rewatching Sorrentino films, some of which- Mm... I'd seen, some of which I had not seen, and that was really fun.
And that kind of put me, uh, it reminded me that there was a book that I wanted to read called Gomorrah, which is about- Mm. Um, it's not about the Sicilian mob.
It's actually about mafia activity in and around Naples, and it came out a while ago, like early 2000s, I think. But- I've read... I've, I've not read the book.
I didn't know there was a book, but I've seen the movie a few times. Yeah, and then the, the show Gomorrah that was on Netflix was, like, very, very, very loosely based on it. Um- There's a show of it too. Yeah.
So I was like, "Let's keep this party going." Um, and 'cause we'd watched some of the more historical Sorrentino films that are based on, like, actual Italian politicians, um, Il Divo was what kind of kicked it off.
And yeah, I've been enjoying that. And then we went out to a kind of Italian steakhouse in our area for Valentine's Day, and Ben looked around and remarked that he wished it was more Italian.
I was like, [laughs] "I don't know. I don't know what that means or if, whether either of us is qualified to make that-" [laughs] "... um, proclamation," but that seems to be where our heads are at.
Is he, is he at all Italian himself? [lips smack] No, he's only Italian by marriage. Mm. [laughs] Oh, man. And I remind him that all the time. Mm-hmm.
I had a lovely Italian meal, um, last weekend, week, week and a half ago, Il Gigante here- Okay... in beautiful Ridgewood, and they...
There's one dish on the menu that is my favorite dish, but, like, every other time I go, I get something else. I'm like, "Oh, I should try this new thing," you know? I'm sure you do this as well.
There's, like, the one thing you like, "I should try this new thing." And I got a, you know, good mushroom lasagna.
It was good, but I was with my sister, and she got the gramigna, which is this dish that's so good, and it's, like, these small curly noodles in this, like, sweet sagey sausage sauce. Um, and I had a bite of hers, and-
Yeah... I felt like a fool. You engaged in the illusion of choice. I engaged in the illusion of choice. E- all paths lead back to gramigna. Yeah.
You keep going out and trying other stuff to see if it's better than the gramigna, but it's like- [laughs]... you have gramigna at home. You know what I mean? We have gramigna at home. People could learn a lot from that.
And we have James in the lobby, so let's talk to him. Let's let him in. [upbeat music] What are your best sellers right now? What's selling best at the bookstore? Mm. Pick a special one.
Um, so our, like, overall best-selling book, uh, is a, like, a Two Dollar Radio, who are a small press based in Columbus, Ohio. Um, it's one of their books. It's called The Deeper the Water, The Uglier the Fish. Um,
and it is a debut novel. Uh, it's one of my wife's staff picks. Mm. Um, she's the one, Josie's the one with taste, uh, not me. So The Deeper the Water, The Uglier the Fish is about a 16-year-old, uh,
who finds their mother, uh, at the, like, scene of, uh, an attempt on her own life. And, uh, it's basically, like, an exploration of family dynamics and, and grief, and it has a very, like, sinister sense of humor.
We w- we're big fans of, uh, of, of Black comedy here, um, at Recluse Books LLC. So that's our, that's our overall bestseller. Um- Wait, did you say it was $2 also? Two Dollar Radio is the name of the publisher.
Oh, okay. [laughs] Um, they're, they're based in Columbus, Ohio. Uh, they're, they do a lot of, like, uh, a lot of cool translation stuff. Uh, they do a lot of, like, local Ohio stuff too.
Probably best known for launching the career of Hanif Abdurraqib- Mm... um, who is, like, basically inescapable at this point, a rather genius. I did read There's Always This Year- Mm-hmm...
which was really good, his memoir. Yeah. I've, I've heard him read from that, um, twice now, and both times I'm just like, "God, what..." You can tell he was a poet, you know? Mm-hmm.
Sometimes somebody will be a really good reader, and it's like, uh, at events and things, and you're just like, "I wish I could listen to you do this whole book, uh, right now." I don't care about audiobooks.
I'm not an audiobook guy. But yeah. Anyway, that's our overall best seller. Our second best seller is Frog and Toad. Um- Oh... Frog and Toad Are Friends. Yeah, classic.
How are people finding out- And, yeah, it's great...
about the Two Dollar Radio book other than Josie highlighting it in her staff picks?The thing that we really love about book-selling is that you can, like, do sort of a speed dating thing almost where you, you ask somebody what they're looking for, what types of things that they like, and you try to get to know them in two to three minutes.
Hmm. And then you say, "Okay, you're looking for a book about a complicated family with a strong voice, uh, maybe, you know, a precocious teenage narrator. Uh, you're gonna love this book," um, and we hand it to them.
[smacks lips] Uh, but you know, I just... It... You make yourself into a human algorithm, I guess. [laughs] Um, and, and so that... And a lot of it is just foisting your own tastes upon people.
Uh, and I don't know if I should be giving that away or if the, like, bookseller, uh, council is going to come after me. Um, but it really is a lot of just, "I liked this and now you're going to as well."
Well, no, that's your job as somebody who's, like, collecting all these books in one place. Like, you're filtering- Mm-hmm...
a certain selection of books that, you know, part of it, there's some market considerations I'm sure of, like, what's actually gonna sell to the people in our community. Yeah. But then that's...
The rest of it is, what do we think people should be reading, and how can we convince them to read it? I, I read that you have around 6,000 books in the store. Is, is that correct? Yes. That is correct.
I've always wondered, I've always wondered how, like, when you're opening a bookstore, how you pick those, how you stock those. What's the process? Um, so
the, the opening was a lot of, um, a lot of agonizing, [laughs] honestly. [laughs] Um, a lot of spreadsheets.
It was really just, um, going through, uh, our own bookshelves and bookstores that we had worked at in the past and knowing, you know... reading a lot of reviews of stuff that had recently come out or was on the horizon.
Some of the publishers will provide, like, a sort of an essentials catalog that you can draw off of.
Um, so we were able to go through, like, all of the Penguin Classics and decide which ones we wanted and which ones we didn't.
[smacks lips] But that was really the first big exercise in the, the curation of the store, 'cause we knew going into it that we wanted everything in the store to feel sort of hand-selected.
So there was, uh, a little bit of conscious resisting of some of the essentials catalogs as well because, um, we didn't want to just have whatever the best sellers from any publisher or in any given category or anything like that.
Um, [smacks lips] we wanted everything to feel intentional. Mm-hmm.
So it was, it was a lot of, uh, just the two of us sitting next to each other on our respective computers, editing over the same Google Doc and deleting each other's work by accident. [laughs] And, uh, [sighs]
it was a pr- It's, it's an ordeal, honestly.
Um, and but once you get everything sort of into the store, [smacks lips] then you can do the finer tuning of, okay, well, people are enjoying this or that or not enjoying this or...
[smacks lips] Uh, there have been some surprises on stuff that we, like, brought a lot of copies in and- Mm... sold none. [laughs] Whereas, like, our friends in our- I guess you're not allowed to say what those are...
short list cities have sold. [laughs] Uh, I, I, I don't know. Uh, let's, let's see. Let me think about, uh, how- Poles by Louis Sacher [laughs] Um, yeah. Catching Fire.
We, we brought in a million copies of that, and everybody was like, "Ugh, Shia LaBeouf has been canceled." Well, wait, actually- So-... so I mean, 6,000 books, that's 6,000, 6,000 titles, right? And then, like- Yes...
what, the, the numbers of each, uh, the numbers of book of each title you have, what's, what, which, like... I, I imagine there's some that are just one.
What's, like, the most stocked book, and then what's more of the average stocking across those titles? Um, so we normally have one or two copies of everything.
Um, if there's something we're, like, really excited about or something that we know we can really reliably sell to people, then we'll bring in, you know, five, six copies of things. Mm. Um,
to sort of go back to Daisy's question, um, we brought in way too many copies of, uh, Shadow Ticket, honestly. [laughs] Mm.
Um, for whatever reason, people just did not go for that the way that I thought they would, whereas, like, my friends in New York or Chicago, uh, moved a ton of copies of that [laughs] right out the bat. I bought one.
Yeah. So my apologies to Mr. Pinchin if you're out there listening. Um- [laughs]... um, I'm sure you are. Our most famous listener, actually. Yeah, of course. Um, [laughs] so it's, it's been,
it's been interesting, like, learning the sort of the tastes of the community and figuring out how to do our ordering based on that.
Um, but for the most part, I think the m- we average one or two copies, sometimes up to five or six. Um, events or r- readings are a whole other can of worms, um, whole other box of books.
The, uh, the culture of, of Fort Worth, I read in your earlier interview in Dirt that, uh, that there wasn't much of a bookstore community. You said there was just two other indies and a Barnes & Noble, which I, I...
And, like, it has to be more than that, right? It's... This is the 11th most populous city in the country with one million people as of 2024. Were there really so few bookstores before you opened? Within Fort Worth, yes.
Um, there are a couple others when you get out into sort of the more suburban areas. Mm.But there wasn't one that sort of had the selection and the vibe that we wanted.
We basically opened this to be the sort of bookstore that we like to shop at, and so we, we figured, okay, if we want this to exist, it looks like we're gonna have to be the ones to create it, and so that's, uh, that's what we did.
There- there's another one, um, that does m- it's like a bakery/bookstore. Mm. Uh, a- and they have sort of a limited selection of cookbooks and things.
There's another one that is, uh, run out of, like, I don't think it's a house that somebody actually lives in, but it's clearly, like, the bookstore was a house at one point. Mm-hmm.
Um, and so they do a lot of, like, design books, um, and, like, architecture, coffee table sorts of things.
And so we, we really were trying to fill a need for sort of a, a well-curated general interest thing, because the other indies had their specific niches, and so we decided we were gonna try to fill, uh, ours.
And, you know, so far so good. [laughs] Mm-hmm. How quickly... Like, was it hard to get the word out? Like, from open to,
I don't know, w- like, some milestone where you, you'd sold a certain amount of books or made a mo- a certain amount of money. What was, like, the... What was that path?
How long did that take to get to the first whatever the milestone is, where you're like, "All right, this is working"? Um, y- yes and no. It was, like, hard to get the word out. Uh, it's, it's one of those things where
I think we made a decent splash when we first opened, and people were, like, excited about it, but then it's always the question of, like, how do you get people to keep coming back to your thing? Mm.
Um, I did a lot of interviews when the store first opened to try to, you know, get the word out there. Um, Daisy was very kind to, to give us a, like, a Dirt feature.
The day the store opened was on Independent Bookstore Day last year, and I, like... I'd worked in, in book publishing as well, so I know a decent number of, like, quote, unquote, "media people." Um, so, like, I had...
I was interviewed in Vulture, like, the day the store opened about Indie Bookstore Day and about- Mm... Amazon and all of that kinda stuff.
So we had people showing up who were like, "Oh, I saw your interview this morning, and I decided to come check out the store this afternoon." Um- That's awesome...
so that was cool, and, like, it do- You know, you try not to take it personally if somebody comes in, looks around, and then, like, you never see them again. Um, which, whatever. Uh [laughs] whatever. It's fine.
Um- [laughs] I, uh, I do maintain- Well, how often... What percent of people that you recommend a book to, James, actually come back and give you feedback on how good your algorithm was? Um, honestly, a, a decent...
Like, the people who, who become regulars. Uh, so I would say it's 15, 20% of our customers are people that, like, now we know by name, um, by...
or at least by, like, recognition, um, who we've hand sold stuff to before who have come back to, to say, like, "Okay, this one worked for me," or, "This one didn't, uh, but let's try something else."
Um, it's cool to watch people sort of get invested in us, in the store, in the things that we're doing. I've only...
I, I told this story on, um, online the other day, but, uh, like, every time I sell a copy of Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin, um, every time I sell a copy of that to somebody, I look them in the eye and I say, uh, "Come back if you need to talk about it."
[laughs] Um, and for the first time, somebody actually did, um, which was great. That's awesome. Uh, it was... They happened to come back and be like, "I cried so much."
[laughs] Uh, and, and, you know, that's the kind of thing I think you, you don't get with a corporate bookstore of, like, a Barnes & Noble or with Amazon or anything like that, is I, I now have this, like, one-on-one relationship with this person.
Mm-hmm. Um, I've only had one person come back and be like, "So you recommended this to me, and it was... I hated it." [laughs] What? Yeah. What was the book?
Uh, it was, uh, The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, uh, which they, they thought it was weird and depressing, and I was like, "Well, you might be in the wrong store." [laughs] But yeah, that's a good book.
I like that book. It's, it's a heartbreaker. What are you reading right now?
I am, uh, just now digging into The School of Night by Karl Ove Knausgaard, um, the newest in his Morning Star saga, uh, and I am really enjoying it so far. I love a Faust retelling. Mm-hmm.
And I think I'm becoming a Knausgaard person. Um, I've read this series so far, and I've read- Of which this is the fourth... Yes. I've read the first three. This is the fourth.
I read his Seasonal Quartet, um, as well, because I was, uh, I was gonna become a father, and I was like, "You know, I'll read some dad books," but, like- Yeah...
not- Which, for listeners who don't know, these are, like... It's a series of very short essays about, like...
Like, each one is, like, a couple pages about some thing in the world, whether it's teeth or trees or sunsets, and it's framed as, like, letters to his kids, to this specific unborn daughter at the time, I think, about what these things are and how, how he sees the world.Yeah, it's, it's sort of a beautiful project.
And then abruptly about three books into it, it becomes more of a traditional Knausgaard style, um- Oh, I wonder the first one. Yes.
Um, so, so in book three it suddenly becomes a very like diaristic, um, first person. It has like a narrative arc to it. Uh, and then, and then book four, it like goes back to being the sort of es- the short essays.
It's, it's- Hmm... a weird structure that he pulls off, but I, I have not yet gotten into the big- Struggled. Yeah.
I have not yet gotten into the big one, and I'm sure I will like it, uh, whenever I do get there, but like I, I'm never beating the performative male allegations as it is. Um, so, uh, I don't need to.
All gender is a performance, baby. Um- Yeah. Oh, for sure. [laughs] Uh, the, uh... I, I'm a big fan of the, of, of the My Struggle series.
That's how I got into it, though I should admit, I don't know if I've ever admitted this publicly on the pod, maybe I have, I've never actually finished the sixth one.
Um, the sixth one's like 900 pages, and about 300 pages in, you... He starts...
Uh, sometimes he does this thing where he, he starts essaying within one of his novels, uh, which doesn't always work because what I tend to love most about reading him is how, how, how you kind of glide through his world.
These aren't complex sentences. It's more like y- you, you, you... It...
They're long books, but you read them so quickly, um, because of the simplicity of the language and how emotive and evocative it is of his inner life.
But when he starts to essay, and in this one he's writing about like Nazism and this poem about Hitler, I k- I kind of forget. I'm like, I'm, I'm reading like 50 pages into this section and I'm kinda like, "Oh my God.
Like, how long is this gonna go on?" I skip 300 pages in like just to see, he's talking about the same poem. Um, so I, I got discouraged. I s- I can't work through this right now, and I put it down.
Um, but I gotta get back to it someday. I think you have made it further into the series than most people. Um- Yeah. Just before the finish line... but yeah. And it does...
It is kind of funny that it like takes all the way until the last book for him to finally be like, "So about, uh, about that title." [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. Uh, [laughs] um, what a, what a guy. Um, so I'm really...
I'm enjoying School of Night so far, uh, like you said, because of the sort of the simplicity of the language, but the depth of the ideas. Um, I also, um,
moved to the big city to pursue a doomed dream of being a photographer when I was like 18 years old, so I can relate to it, uh, in that regard. Whether or not I sold my soul, uh, to the devil remains to be seen.
I don't think you- But we'll, uh, [laughs] who knows. Um, we'll get to the consequences eventually, I'm sure. You'd be up on the stage at MoMA right now if you had.
I don't know if that's a spoiler or not, but, uh- [laughs]... anyways. Um, but wait, so one thing I'm reading right now is Dahlgren by Samuel Delany. Have y'all ever read Samuel Delany? I have not.
It's, it's one that I see people talk about all the time- Mm-hmm... um, but have never actually gotten to.
I, so I won't then spend too much time on this, but I like w- this is the third or fourth kind of beefy build a sci-fi book that I've read over the last four years or so, kind of been reading like one a year.
But I'm, I'm struck by with sci-fi
readers in particular, it seems that there is such a sci-fi reader who reads so much sci-fi and doesn't seem to step outside of that, and, uh, which always is a little interesting to me.
But it's interesting reading this too and reading all of the...
The other ones I've read recently were Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe, which is really good, and then before that, Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein, you know, famously of, uh, writing Star Troopers.
But one observation about all these sci-fi guys, they are all huge perverts. [laughs] There's a lot of sex in all their books, and, and like weird incest stuff.
I don't know if that's just these like three beefy, um, novels that I, that I've read over the past few years, but, uh, yeah, what's up with that? Well, I don't know, I don't know, uh,
if you've, if, if this has ever crossed your path, but people, uh, like to have sex. [laughs] Ouch. And so, um, [laughs] sorry. Oh my God. Um, so I think that might explain why it's- But, but, but more than like your-...
it comes up so often. Yeah. More than like other novels, though. Like e- like, I don't know, Knausgaard has like seven kids. He doesn't talk about- Yeah... sex this much. Yeah, that's true. Um, I don't know.
Maybe it's like a way to try to, if you're telling a sort of outlandish, uh, sci-fi-ish story, you're on other planets in, you know, hyperspace- Sci-fi and fantasy, it puts the fantasy in fantasy. Yeah.
Uh, but for sci-fi it might actually ground it in something more human. Um- Hmm... if you're getting into sort of the technology and the, the singularity or whatever, uh- Yeah...
maybe it, that's how you can bring it all back to- This one's really interesting 'cause it's like there's not so much of that like extra, like extraterrestrial or, or anything like that.
It's, it's like, I think it's written in the '70s and it just takes place in some city in the middle of America where something has happened.
Everything is normal outside, but there's some like, the city was on fire or something. Everybody... It- it's a large city, everybody has left.
There's only 1,000 people left, and it's kinda just this, this guy who's forgotten his name and has come to this city wandering through it. Um,
it, I'm not really sure what, where it's going or what the point is, but it's a, it's a beautiful world. Samuel Delany a great writer. Um, okay, you throw events at the shop, right?We do, yes.
We've, we recently started to get into, like, author events, um, readings, conversations, et cetera. Uh, we do a lot of- Do community events help sell books? Like, do people come for the events and browse? Um, they do.
So yeah, we do a lot of, like, community-focused stuff. Uh, we, we have a biweekly thing where, like, we, we have people come in, and they make zines, and it's like everybody comes in, and they draw.
One week they draw, uh, or write or do something like that along a theme, and then the next time they come in, and everybody helps put together the little, the booklet, um, which is, like, a really fun sort of arts and crafts project, and it's just a good excuse for people, like, to come into the store.
And some, yeah, sometimes they browse, sometimes they buy stuff, but we, we wanted to do things that didn't have the pressure of having to pay money.
I think Josie and I both remember being, like, young people and, and not... having to pay to exist, basically. Yeah. Um, where, like, everything had a cover charge, or you had to buy a ticket or whatever.
And so the, the... I don't wanna, you know, get into all of the kind of third place stuff 'cause I think most people are familiar with that and feel like we need to spend too much time rehashing that idea.
But i- it's nice to have somewhere to go that you can just go and do a thing and, uh, not necessarily have to pay money. Mm-hmm. So you and Josie actually met- On the, on the... Oh, go ahead. You were...
Like, Josie and James were working at a bookstore when they met. So I'm curious, is there th- other things that you both,
um, agreed, having had that experience of like, "Okay, we're never gonna do it this way," or like, "We're gonna start our own bookstore. We're never gonna do this and that"? Um, some of it is...
I mean, yes, there are things that we have the, have the experience of saying, "We're never gonna do it that way."
Part, part of it comes down to, like, the curation, uh, where we're not doing a whole ton of, like, the romantasy stuff.
Um, we, we did cave on heated rivalry, um, just because, like, that's genuinely, I don't wanna say weird, but, like, it, it has a very specific niche. Hmm. Um, and we, we, we respect that about it.
We love a good niche. Um, and, and so part of it does come down to, like, we don't wanna just bring in the bestsellers, the airport fiction, you know? Hmm.
Uh, so no offense to James Patterson or Danielle Steel, uh, but you can buy those books anywhere. So we, we knew we didn't wanna do that. Uh, we knew we did not... We...
It took us forever to start getting the events stuff done because, like, Josie has a lot of experience booking authors and, uh, doing that kind of stuff at other stores, and she is a very, uh, a wonderful, sensitive human being, and she can't stand the idea that, uh, you might book a, book something and nobody shows up, um, for one reason or another.
[laughs] But it's, sometimes it's just raining, and it's Wednesday, and nobody wants to go out. Um, and it's, uh, it has no reflection on the author or the book or anything like that.
There are factors outside of your control. So we, uh, we had a lot of conversations about whether or not we even wanted to do that kind of thing- Hmm... because we, we've done it before.
We know it can be stressful, but- You guys need to have-... at the same time-...
like, 10 people on a contract that says, "You might need to contact them at the last minute to show up at a reading, and you'll pay them $50 an hour." Yeah, that. [laughs] I think that would solve your problem.
[laughs] Give them a copy of the book. Yeah. Uh, let's... I'll put out a, like, casting call. We'll do it like extras. Um, it'll be... I think that's a great idea. You've solved it.
Every publicist needs to be taking notes right now. You need to have a roster of this in every city in America. Uh- You know what it reminds me of? [laughs] My, um, my friend's father was a public defender.
He was incredible at his work, and he passed away, and his funeral was, like, full of people who, you know, he had defended, whatever.
Um, he, like, one time went up to, like, a random family in downtown Brooklyn and was like, "I will buy you lunch if you come and sit in court and pretend to be this guy's family." [laughs] And they did it. Wow, wild.
But I just think there could be- That's so sweet... maybe there could be a literary reading equivalent of that. Yeah. Yeah, I think there could, honestly. Um, and
authors are, you know, they're a sensitive bunch, so I do feel like this is a life or death sort of thing to them. Poets you don't have to worry about, honestly. Uh, you would think that you've gotta, you know, use...
you gotta be real gentle with the poets, but poets bring their friends. Um- Mm-hmm... I don't know why that is. Every, like, the best attended, uh, readings or anything I've ever been to, always poets. [laughs] Huh.
Yeah. The, um... So talking about, like, will people show up or will they not, uh, makes me think of, like, where... Okay, where is the bookstore within the city?
Which, bear with me a second, uh, my, my childhood bookstore where I used to love going burned down at the beginning of the year. It was, like, a, a... So I'm from a small town. It's, like, 14,000 people.
This whole block burned down. Um, like, a, a... which is itself literally a block from, like, the plaza in the center of town. Uh, it's tragedy, right?
This bookstore has been around in some way since I think the '60s, and it's, it's, like, every time I go back and visit my family, I'll end up, like, sitting there for a while if I'm just, like, walking around town, and it's like-It's in the middle.
In high school, I would meet friends there. It's like such a, it was such a community pillar. It's so sad. They're, they're, like, trying to get insurance. Um, we'll see if that happens.
It's gonna be a pain because it was multiple buildings. I understand they're trying to figure out which one started it, so they need to, like, assign blame before they can pay out any money.
They raised $135,000 on GoFundMe or one of those platforms. That's awesome. Um, but there's all this talk about, okay, they have to rebuild. Will they rebuild?
And the guy who runs it, his name is Dante, a fitting name, says he's going to rebuild it. Uh,
w- where is the question, but for me, it's like it has to be in that place which is right in the center of town, and is so important, and, like, made it, for me, such a part of, like, the fabric of my life and for certainly so many others.
So, like, I'm wondering, obviously Recluse is still quite new and, and you're building this culture, but when you brought up, you know, like, getting people to come out for it, I'm wondering, like, where it is in the city, and what's around it, and, like, how the bookstore, how you see it fitting into the fabric of the city, and how it's already being woven in.
So we are, uh, in a neighborhood called the Near Southside, um, which is just south of downtown. Um, it is right off of Interstate 30, and believe it or not, just south of the train station.
Um, we do, in fact, have, uh, public transport here, although you would not, uh... you wouldn't really know it. News to me. Um, the train, the train basically, like, runs to the airport, uh, and back.
Uh- Which is famously between Dallas and Fort Worth, right? Yes. Right in the middle? Yeah. Yes. Um, it's right in the middle, and so there's, like...
yeah, there's trains that go from Dallas and Fort Worth to the airport, but that's really, uh- So you're kind of an airport bookstore is what you're saying. Yeah, basically. 100%. Um- [laughs]...
we are located way off of Terminal C. [laughs] Um, but [laughs] we are there. Um, uh, [laughs] um, I...
and I see us fitting into the fabric of the city because we are part of this, this neighborhood of sort of, uh, closely knit businesses and apartment buildings. It's one of the more walkable areas of the city.
Um, there's even, like, a... right now, it is a patch of, like, dead grass and garbage that will allegedly be a park.
[laughs] Um, they're gonna, like, landscape, uh, right across the street and turn this into, like, a nicer looking patch of dead grass and garbage.
Um, but, uh, it's, it's cool to, like, be a part of this, this area that, uh, you know, 10 years ago was, was warehouses and vacant lots, and now there's a bookstore and a thousand coffee shops.
Um, which is part of why we don't do coffee is because we wanted to, like, make it known that we're, we're not a threat [laughs] to what anybody else is doing. That was my next question. I live in Ridgewood.
We were just talking about this before we started recording, and there are, to my knowledge, uh, there's three bookstores in the neighborhood here. They're all bookstore coffee shops.
One of them, Topos, there's two Toposes now in the same neighborhood, but one of them was one of the first, like, new wave businesses in this, um, neighborhood whose property value has gone up a lot in the past, you know, in the time since that bookstore opened.
Um, shades of that, you know, hopefully the, uh, as the, [laughs] as longer your bookstore's around, that park will get nicer, th- you know, multiple renovations.
Um, anyways, long way of saying, yeah, I was really interested in your decision to not make it a coffee shop.
'Cause my understanding of why so many new bookstores is coffee shops is that it is expensive to run a bookstore, and it's hard.
And so coffee, having a coffee shop provides more stability and allows you to run this business without, like, you know, tearing out your hair every night. Yeah.
So part of the decision to not be a coffee shop was based on the, the landscape of the neighborhood, all of these other small businesses, and these people we got to know, and respect, and work, and wanted to work with in the future.
And part of the other consideration was, uh, we... when we signed the lease, um, on the space that would become our bookstore, it was just a, like, empty room. We... and we got to do- Mm-hmm...
like, whatever we wanted with the, the construction.
And so part of it was thinking about construction costs and all of the stuff that you have to do to get your, like, food handling license, and having to deal with, like, he- the health department.
And whatever, you know, hair pulling we do at any, uh, on any given night is probably less than having to also juggle that.
We figured that, you know, we could either do one thing and do it well, or we could try to do two things and maybe do both of them badly. [laughs] Um,
and so we, we were banking on the idea that, like, people would get interested in the books, and the curation, and that kind of stuff, that we could make a successful business just on that.
I don't know if you've heard of, uh, the taste economy, um, but having vision and curation, uh, can, can really go a long way for a business. Feel like I read at least one article about that in Dirt.
Speaking of the taste economy, um, so we haven't gotten into this yet, but you've worked for different publishers like Seven Stories Press, um, which is famously the publisher of Annie Ernaux.
She famously won the Nobel Prize, and which is a big accolade for somebody who was putting out their work with a smaller publisher, although I think Seven Stories Press is better known in Europe.
And then, um, Dalkey and Deep Vellum, where you were marketing books that some people might consider unmarketable, like the book Schattenfrau, which has come in, come up on thisPodcast before, Francis and I, I think, both have a copy.
It's a rather large book by an author named Michael Lentz, who's very big in Germany, but maybe not as much known here, um, sold very well. So
I guess my question is, like, being on the bookseller side and seeing the dynamics of people coming into a bookstore looking for a book, and then also having been on the marketing side for books that are a little bit more complex, complicated, not exactly heated rivalry, like, what has that taught you about who buys books and why, and, like, why books sell, uh, beyond the sort of, like, hand-wavy thing in publishing which drives me crazy, which is where people will say nobody buys books, which obviously isn't true.
Some people do, and they have good reasons for it. Um, but if you could, like, break down that statement into what, what people are attempting to encapsulate or refute it, like, how does your experience stack up?
Well, my experience with that, uh, is that you, uh, just tell everybody that there's a lot of gay hockey players in Schottenfroh. [laughs] Not true. Uh, but, um, uh... So
really what it comes down to is, uh, making something feel approachable. Mm-hmm.
Uh, if you're trying to sell somebody on something complicated or whatever, you, you want people to know that they, they have the tools required to read the thing or to, uh, enjoy the thing.
Because when you're selling a book to somebody, what you're... The, sort of the transaction is you're gonna give me $20, and you're gonna spend hours of your life on this thing. Mm-hmm.
Um, it's not the same as recommending a movie or an album or, you know, something that somebody can consume in 45 minutes to... Movies are all too long now.
But, uh, recommending a book to somebody is like, "Yeah, this is gonna be a commitment," so you wanna make sure they're gonna have the best experience with it.
Part of what that means is, I talked about this upfront, you do this sort of speed dating of getting to know somebody. Or from the publisher side, you, you say to somebody, "Okay, this is, like, this...
It's gonna look on the surface like this is a 1,001-page experimental novel, uh, translated from German, but it's actually a very, very quiet story about, like, the main character and his dead dad."
Uh, and it's... I, I tell everybody it's a daddy issues book, um, which is much more approachable than, uh, you're gonna, like, need all of these understandings of, you know,
German idealism or Hegel or, you know, whatever philosopher. That does not feel approachable to people. Hmm. Uh, a lot of people understand hating their dads. Um, [laughs] but, uh, it, it- But the, but the...
This, sorry to interrupt for a second, but this goes back, yeah, to what you were saying about the, the speed dating or about, like, imposing your taste on, on the shoppers at your bookstore, right?
Where it's like it's your job to, to package it in this way, in a way that's really relatable and understandable, and then that makes them a better reader by then they learn a bit about Hegel or whatever, w- everything else that's in Schottenfroh, right?
With any given book, it's like what's the in that makes people curious enough to get 50 pages into this book, which I feel like for me in, you know, a 300-page novel is typically when I start to really get going and then I'm, like, blazing through it.
You just have to convince them to read the first 50 pages, and then the rest should, like, after that, the, like, they should buy into these ideas and learn new things about the world and themselves and ideas. Yeah.
And, like, often a, a, an easy way to do that is through comparison. Y- you can say to somebody, you know, "Oh, you like David Lynch? You're gonna like the, the weird, off-kilter atmosphere of, you know, X, Y, Z book.
You like Annie Ernaux, who writes these very, very sparse, intense diaries? Uh, you're also gonna like Danish poet Tove Ditlevsen." Um, you're, like, the...
You take the thing that people, uh, have heard of, and you use that to, like, redirect them to something that they, uh, haven't heard of yet.
It, there's also, you know, all kinds of conceptual nonsense I can get into about, like, you're selling the idea of the book more than you're actually selling the book.
You're selling the idea of the book, or are you selling the idea of being somebody who reads the book more? Both, honestly. Yeah, because you can, you can sell the idea of, uh, like...
You can sell the idea of being the kind of person who reads these difficult books, but you can also- Yeah... sell the f- i- the, the notion that, uh,
something is gonna be more approachable or it's gonna be le- uh, less work than you might otherwise think it's going to be. Basically- What about the subset of people-... marketing is, uh-...
that will buy a book because it's marketed as difficult?
I mean, this is a thesis of something Greta wrote, that there's a certain type of person that wants to think of themselves as a serious reader, and so the, you know, the actual, the idea of a book being kinda hard to get through is appealing to them.
I would assume that's, like, fewer people than would like a book to be accessible, but maybe it is an important type of patron. I, I think a lot of people like the idea of being a serious reader.
Um, so you can sort of invert this idea and say, "This is a long and difficult book, but it's not actually."As long and difficult as you, as you think it's going to be, or you can say you are a, a, like, a better reader than you expect.
Mm. Uh, the, I- I've found that there's diminishing returns on marketing something as, like, this is a, this is a challenge. Mm. This is, like, a line in the sand, a sink or swim kind of thing.
The customer who buys that m- might buy it, and then maybe it sits and gathers dust on their shelf, and then maybe they buy the next one that's marketed like that, and then after that they say, "Man, I'm not reading these, and now there's, like, a foot of shelf space that's just covered in dust, and I just can't buy any more things that I'm not gonna read."
Yeah. 'Cause, like, I come, I come at it from the, the idea that you do want people to actually read and engage with the thing. [laughs] Um, I'm not, I'm not, like, a numbers guy. I'm, like, a, a, an art guy.
[laughs] Um, I would like people to, to read books rather than just buy them. I would like there to be less, you know, literary Funko Pops in the world.
[laughs] Uh, that, like, people are just collecting because it's the newest one. I think it's- I just got the Karl Ove Knausgaard one. It actually has a set, a pack of cigarettes and a bag of prawns, so. Oh, nice.
Be careful who you're talking to. That's very cool. [laughs] I can, like, kinda actually see it in my mind.
[laughs] Uh, the, like, the, the sort of stubbly, like, I don't know how they- He's got, he's got, like, the, the, the mug for it... yeah.
[laughs] I don't know how they captured that mournful look in his eyes, like, in plastic, um, but they did it. Uh- Well, the Funko Pop's eyes are already beady black, so. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Sorry I had to. [laughs] Stop.
[laughs] Um, yeah, so I guess that's, that's what it comes down to, is that, uh, you c- you can say, "This is, this is an incredibly difficult thing. Uh, this is not gonna be for everybody," but
I would always, I would rather invite people in rather than try to use that sort of gatekeeping as a tactic.
I'm trying to think of, I'm trying to name names, basically, uh, of, of, like, examples of where that's been done correctly or done poorly.
Ooh, an example of where it's been done correctly, I think, is actually the v- uh, if you go back about 10 years, the video game Death Stranding had a really fascinating marketing pitch because that,
that game was, like, it, it, it took many millions of dollars and many years in development to create. Uh, and the marketing pitch was basically this is going to be incomprehensibly experimental. Mm.
Um, this is the game that nobody else would let Hideo Kojima make, and we're gonna do it.
Um, and, and that is, when there's actually that much money on the line, is a, a really wild way to do it, and it does seem to have paid off for them.
But when you, I think when you go about marketing that way, you do a little bit run the risk of it's insubstantial, you know?
When you, when you try to say, "This is going to be extremely weird, extreme," like, uh, you're- Then it better truly be really weird. With, like, with Kojima- Yes. [laughs]...
like, I, I've, I've played, I have Death Stranding. I haven't finished it. Um, it was, like, one of the last video games I played before I stopped playing as much video games. But, uh, it's, it's- Same...
I mean, it's, it's amazing. It's such, like, this, it, he's an auteur, right? And he comes to it having done, it was, like, five Metal Gear Solid games, right? Over, like, 15, 20 years, if not a little longer. Mm-hmm.
So he had, like, built up this credibility and this massive international fan base for his video games, for his name, right?
So, like, with that, there's this, these, like, two decades of trust and belief built that, like, oh, this will be this complex piece of work, and this will be so detailed because I've played these other games, and I, and I know this to be true.
So I think it's, like, maybe the only way to really successfully pull off that marketing, like, to bring it back to books, is the author has to have already a proven track record of pulling off this sort of complexity and, um, y- entertainment value as well, right?
In one. Or maybe it's their debut and they have some other name, or maybe they don't have a name yet, but, like, they have people doing the marketing for them who are able to spin the story.
But you need to either be at the beginning of, of building yourself as a character, author as a character, or you need to be far enough into the career where there's this track record that then people will believe you.
Um, but maybe you can't really do it in the middle for a, a more mid-career, uh, author or writer who has not really written anything that truly feels complex and challenging in the way we're talking about. Yeah.
Um, that, I think, is, those are two of the, uh, the real approaches for when this type of thing works. Um, the other way that you can make that kind of thing work is to, um, lie.
[laughs] Uh, [laughs] is to, to, uh, you can, you can get people excited. This is actually something that I tell, uh, anytime I've, like, had interns or whatever.
Um, uh, I tell them one of the easiest ways to get people, uh, excited about something is to tell them that they already are.
Uh, that you, you just tell people that, like, there are conversations going on and now is your chance to be a part of it. Um, you can get in on this international thing or, you know, the hype or the buzz or whatever.
Uh, nobody wants to be left out. It's that, it, it's that simple. Um, the, the problem with doing these sorts of, like, hype driven, buzzy campaigns is that I'm always personally worried that, uh,
you're, like-It's gonna seem like you're trying to get people to buy the thing before it comes out, and then, like, it's gonna be bad.
Uh, if you say this is a difficult experimental book, uh, all of, and, like, all of the reviews are gonna be negative, and, uh, but you've already gotten people's money because you did such a good job with the, like, hype-based marketing.
Um, that's always the kinda thing that I want to avoid. Um, I wanna position people to enjoy the thing rather than just try to get their money, and then whatever experience they have with it
is the experience they have with it. I would much rather people enjoy the thing. Well, we love to enjoy things here on Tasteland, and I think that's a perfect place to stop. So thank you so much for coming on, James.
[laughs] Yeah, thanks for having me. Uh, I worried that, you know, this was a little dry. Uh, I had so many, I had so many bits that I was gonna do, and I- [laughs]...
just never had the opportunity, but- I loved the bet cy-... that is what it is... the bet on Coca bit was great, and that will probably get clipped. [laughs] Um, I don't think...
I think what seems dry to you is not dry 'cause it's not obvious to people who don't sell books, you know? That's true. Yeah. That's, you know, that's fair.
Uh, li- listener, thank you for listening, and you should go to reclusebooks.com. They have a wonderful e-com site. Be one of those weird names where the order comes in, and James says, "Who the hell is this person?"
in, in, uh- And I do. I say that out loud- [laughs] Grand Rapids... every time. Yeah. [laughs] Um, sometimes I say it even for names that I do know. Hm. Well, this has been Tasteland. [laughs] We'll see you next week.
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