Miami Book Fair Panel to Feature Author of Illustrated Bookstore Compendium

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New Yorker cartoonist Bob Eckstein, author and illustrator of Footnotes From the World’s Greatest Bookstores: True Tales and Lost Moments From Book Buyers, Booksellers, and Book Lovers (Clarkson Potter), will be featured at this month’s Miami Book Fair, where he will serve on the panel “Indies First: The Central Role of the Indie Bookstore in Lit Culture.”

Footnotes coverThe November 19 panel, taking place just a week before Indies First on Small Business Saturday, will be moderated by American Booksellers Association CEO Oren Teicher. Eckstein, whose humor pieces and cartoons have also appeared in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, will be joined on the panel by Jennifer Haigh, author of the new novel Heat and Light (Ecco), and Amy Stewart, owner of Eureka Books in Eureka, California, and author of Girl Waits With Gun (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and its follow-up, Lady Cop Makes Trouble.

The panel will take as its subject what Eckstein said he considers the heart and soul of every community: the local bookshop, each possessing their own unique quirks, charms, and stories. Eckstein plans to discuss what he learned while researching his new book, a collection of 75 beloved bookstores, past and present, from around the world. Illustrated with evocative paintings and paired with colorful anecdotes about each shop, the collection is, as Eckstein writes in his introduction, meant to be “a celebration of independent stores everywhere and for all those who love books.”

Bob EcksteinAfter visiting many interesting and beautiful stores and meeting with booksellers face-to-face in the course of the project, which originated from an illustrated piece commissioned by the New Yorker about the most beautiful bookshops of New York City, Eckstein became attuned to just how much was at stake in saving the independent bookstore business.

“As I began this two-year process and started to get more and more involved, I became very passionate about bookstores; there was a whole transformation. Meeting with store owners, employees, customers, celebrities from all around the world, and famous writers and great thinkers to get their opinions, I heard stories that made me laugh and stories that made me cry, I heard about all the different challenges that independent bookstores face,” said Eckstein. “In the beginning, bookstores were just stores to me. I didn’t totally appreciate them. But by the end of the project I started seeing things differently.”

The list of subjects and purveyors of bookstore-related anecdotes in Footnotes includes David Bowie, Tom Wolfe, Tracy Chevalier, Jonathan Lethem, Roz Chast, Deepak Chopra, Bob Odenkirk, Robin Williams, Philip Glass, Paul McCartney, Dave Barry, Michael Jackson, Jonathan Ames, Terry Gross, Mark Maron, Neil Gaiman, Ann Patchett, Diane Keaton, Molly Crabapple, Patti Smith, Mo Willems, Alice Munro, Dave Eggers, and Garrison Keillor, who wrote the foreword.

Elliott Bay illustration
The Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, Washington

By the time the project was over, Eckstein said he believed what many in the bookselling community already know, that bookstores are the cultural hubs of their community, providing central meeting places for social activities and like-minded people, but also serving as “a sanctuary, a beacon of intelligence and inspiration, and often the heart and soul of Main Street.”

To help with research, Eckstein was able to bring together a team of people from around the world to assist him in obtaining the widest possible sampling of stores. He personally traveled to England and to a number of American cities he had never visited to do his own face-to-face research. His selections of other stories were based on recommendations, word of mouth, social history, and contributions to the locale.

“I accumulated a really good team of people: big names in publishing and the book industry to help me find out about stores to include in the book that I might not otherwise know — stores in India and other exotic places,” Eckstein said. “People sent me photographs of these stores from all around the world and interviewed people in the cases where it would not be logistically possible for me to.”

El Ateneo Grand Splendid illustration
El Ateneo Grand Splendid in Buenos Aires, Argentina

After collecting more than 300 stories and anecdotes, Eckstein was obliged to narrow down his wish list of stores to include in the book from 150 to a final list of 75. Although it was a painful process, he would cut a store if there were too many of the same type, or too many stores from the same area. Painting one bookstore every three or four days, Eckstein said he tried to make stores look as glamorous and sexy as they could be and put their best foot forward. His aim was to make it clear in each entry that each store had its own unique story and its own unique look, he said.

“Sometimes it would be a loose-looking drawing; in some cases they were really elaborate with a lot of rendering and detail,” Eckstein said. “It was easy to find how each one was different from all the other stores. I was surprised to see how many beautiful stores there were. It wasn’t hard at all to come up with a new fresh look for each one.”

The international selection of stores featured in the book includes City Lights in San Francisco, BookCourtin Brooklyn, Garden District Book Shop in New Orleans, Moe’s Books in Berkeley, the Bookworm in China, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, El Ateneo Grand Splendid in Buenos Aires, and Word on the Water in London, the world’s only floating secondhand bookshop.

Book Cellar illustration
The Book Cellar in Chicago, Illinois

“While I couldn’t include all the stores I wanted to include, I’m very confident that the book has only really great bookstores in it,” said Eckstein. “I had to cut half the stores, unfortunately, but a goal of mine was to do the book well enough that there is no need for a sequel. I only feel bad about the stores I didn’t get to include.”

Eckstein said he is looking forward to his trip to the Miami Book Fair next month, and is excited for the many personal face-to-face conversations he hopes to have with booksellers.

“I want to learn more about bookstores,” Eckstein said. “If you have a story, I want to hear it, and I want to do more to help.”