Brooklyn’s Indie Bookstores Featured on 2014 Calendar

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After noticing the growing number of indie bookstores in Brooklyn, New York City’s most populous borough, Jonas Kyle, co-owner of Spoonbill & Sugartown, Booksellers, and buyer Susan Willmarth had the idea to create a calendar featuring a different Brooklyn bookstore each month.

“We realized we could do it because there are enough booksellers in Brooklyn for every month of the year,” said Kyle. In addition to Spoonbill & Sugartown, stores featured in the Independent Booksellers of Brooklyn 2014 Calendar are WORD, Human Relations Books, powerHouse Books, BookCourt, The Newsstand, Desert Island, Freebird Books & Goods, Community Bookstore, Molasses Books, Unnameable Books, and Greenlight Bookstore.

Kyle worked with architectural photographer Paul Warchol and designer Jason David Brown to produce and print the calendar, which is now available for purchase at the featured businesses. The idea was to celebrate Brooklyn’s literary community as a whole, said Kyle. “My theory is the more bookstores, the better. When more people know about them, it’s better for all of us.”

Rebecca Fitting, co-owner of Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood, said that the calendar is a welcome addition to the store’s inventory, and it has already sold 14. “We’ve got it sitting on our front counter, where people continue to discover it,” she said, adding, “We live in a publishing-heavy, book-savvy neighborhood where there’s also a lot of Brooklyn pride, so we’ve clearly got an audience for a Brooklyn indie bookstore calendar.” Many Greenlight staffers and some of the store’s staunchest customers plan to gift it this holiday season, said Fitting, “so it’ll end up on kitchen and office walls near and far!”

Included in the calendar is a map indicating each store’s location. “It makes you realize that there are so many options, and probably a lot of stores that people don’t know about,” Kyle said.

Though the project was mostly for fun, the proceeds will likely allow Spoonbill & Sugartown to break even, Kyle said, adding, “I’m happy with how it came out. It looks great.”