Feb 2, 2024
Mark interviews Josh Cook, Josh Cook, an author, bookseller and
the co-owner at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
where he has worked since 2004 about his writing, his
book The Art of Libromancy and his life as a
reader and writer.
Prior to the interview, Mark reads comments from recent
episodes, welcomes new patron Jennifer Brinn, thanks Buy Mark a
Coffee patron Nikki Guerlain, shares a personal update, and a word
about this episode's sponsor.
This episode is sponsored by the books The Art of
Libromancy and An Author's Guide to Working with
Libraries and Bookstores.
Ask for these books via your local indie-owned bookstore or via
your local community library.
In the interview, Mark and Josh talk about:
- Josh's earliest days really getting into reading and how he had
wanted to be a writer since about the age of 16
- After post-secondary education, landing in Boston and deciding
that working in a bookstore would be a good place for a writer to
work
- Discovering the "coming soon" and "help wanted" sign on a
neighborhood bookstore: Porter Square Books
- Continuing to build a freelance writing career, crafting
articles, reviews, fiction, and poetry
- Getting his first manuscript into the hands of a publisher that
he knew well from his role in bookselling, which was the novel AN
EXAGGERATED MURDER
- The path, via roles such as Online Presence Manager (website
and social media) and Marketing Director that led to eventually
becoming a co-owner of Porter Square Books
- The challenge of the most qualified people to take over owning
and running a bookstore, the booksellers, often don't have the
necessary money, funding, and resources to do so
- The model that has become a bit more common recently that
enables employees the option of becoming a vested co-owner or
interest sharing participant in a bookstore
- The genesis of the book THE ART OF LIBROMANCY
- The major reckoning that many people had in 2016 when Donald
Trump got elected at trying to understand their place in a world
that would allow something like that to happen
- The concept of how the book industry (publishing, bookselling)
would continue to empower and legitimize the voices of misogyny,
white supremacy, other bigoted ideas
- How it all clicked after Josh had participated in a virtual
event with Biblioasis author Jorge Carrion for the book AGAINST
AMAZON AND OTHER ESSAYS
- Pitching the book to Biblioasis and how the existing
relationship and in-depth knowledge Josh had of their publishing
house (and their editor's knowledge of Josh himself) led to an
instant acceptance of his book proposal
- The importance of relationships and recommendations from people
that you already know, like, and trust - and how that plays a
significant role in book projects
- Elements of human curation that can happen in person within a
community, particularly as something that Amazon can't do
- The idea of a bookstore as a "third place" that is neither home
nor work where someone can go and be a human being with other human
beings
- A few of the challenges, both expected and unexpected, that
happened when Porter Square Books had to adapt into an online and
curb-side order facility during the pandemic
- How the learned skills of booksellers being able to absorb
information and insights about books from publishers, colleagues,
and customers, even if they haven't read them, is such an important
aspect of a bookseller's role
- ARCs (Advance Review Copies) as one of the primary ways Josh
has of knowing what is on the way
- Christopher Morley's THE HAUNTED BOOKSHOP and the Melville
House edition that Josh first discovered which is a love letter to
the art of bookselling
- How books are great ways to be safely uncomfortable
- The paradox of tolerance, as expressed by Karl Popper in THE
OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES: If you tolerate the intolerable, your
space will eventually become intolerant
- A bookseller's role within that paradox of allowing tolerance
for voices that seek fresh voices, but prevent those voices whose
mandate is to shut-down or not allow diverse voices the ability to
be expressed
- Josh's perspective of how publishers, authors, bookstores and
others within the industry involved in this process are all
teammates working together to get books to readers
- Strategies authors can use to establish genuine relationships
with their local community bookstores
- And more . . .
After the interview Mark reflects on walking away from
fascinating conversations with a list of books to read, some of the
parallels between Josh's journey into bookselling and his own, and
how the employee-to-owner situation also parallels the
change-of-ownerships of Words Worth Books, a local indie bookstore
in Waterloo that Mark adores.
Links of Interest:
Josh Cook is a bookseller and co-owner at
Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he has
worked since 2004. He is also author of the critically acclaimed
postmodern detective novel An Exaggerated Murder and his
fiction, criticism, and poetry have appeared in numerous leading
literary publications. He grew up in Lewiston, Maine and lives in
Somerville, Massachusetts.
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast
(“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of
www.incompetech.com and is
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0