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Good afternoon and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to creating conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, October 2nd, and I'm Michelle Smith, Programming Director at Literary Cleveland, and pleased to introduce today's forum, which is a sort of bookend if I may say, to Cleveland Book Fest, a month-long showcase of literary excellence right here in Northeast Ohio.

This afternoon, we will unpack the resurgence of local independent bookstores, and that's in italics.

According to the American Booksellers Association, more than 600 independent bookstores opened in the United States last year.

That's nearly double the number of stores compared to the prior year.

After decades of witnessing the rise of the big box bookstore and online retailers, our local bookshops offer what artificial intelligence or Amazon cannot: spaces that connect people, that build community, and rekindle the joy of reading.

We also cannot ignore the rising popularity of digital books and audiobooks.

However, data shows most Americans still prefer to consume their books in the traditional print format.

Today, many bookstores are branching outside of simple retail locales and offering diverse experiences— live entertainment, conversation, drinks, even role-playing games.

Niche and specialty bookstores are also opening that cater to specific literary genres and fandoms.

For providing a space to gather around shared interests.

And one cannot underestimate the influence of BookTok, which has permeated book culture and become a best-selling juggernaut of a machine.

Still, all of this is taking place during an era where rates of adult reading and literacy have continued to decline.

While Americans are still reading, they're reading less literature.

And women soundly dominate book sales of fiction over men.

What exactly is behind the resurgence of local bookstores, and how has their special place in our communities helped encourage more adults to pick up a good book?

Joining us today to discuss all of this are 4 of your favorite local bookstores.

Yes, yes, yes.

We have Mordecai Cargill, Co-Owner& Creative Director of ThirdSpace Action Lab and ThirdSpace Reading Room, one of the city's only Black-owned bookstores located in the Glenville neighborhood.

It's like a high school graduation.

Dave Ferrante, Owner of Visible Voice Books, which recently underwent a large renovation and expansion into Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood.

This is our next-door neighbor at Literary Cleveland, Elisabeth Plumlee-Watson, Events Director, Buyer, and Bookseller at Loganberry Books, which since 1994 has been a community anchor in Cleveland's Larchmere neighborhood.

And Anthony Craig Senatore, owner at Parallel Universe Bookstore, a specialty bookstore featuring sci-fi, fantasy, romanticy, horror, and RPG books in Ohio City's Hingetown District.

And on Sunday, they will be celebrating their 1-year anniversary.

Moderating the conversation is Bill Kelly, Adult Programming Manager at Cuyahoga County Public Library.

A quick reminder for our livestream and radio audience: if you have a question during the Q&A portion of the forum, you can text it to 330-541-5794, and City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

Now, members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland, it is my pleasure.

To welcome our speakers to the stage.

Bill.

Thanks, Michelle.

Thanks, Michelle.

Hey, everyone.

First of all, we have a bunch of book nerds on the stage, so we're going to try to keep things on track, but forgive our enthusiasm.

We're going to be excited to be talking about books today.

As both Courtney and Michelle mentioned, we recently concluded an incredible Cleveland Book Fest.

During which Cleveland was really in the spotlight of the literary world these past few weeks.

It's a shining example of the rich and thriving literary culture we do have here, and our indie bookstores are a huge part of that scene.

I'd love to hear your respective thoughts on what brought about this renaissance, what shifts or trends have you seen in your respective experiences to account for this, and Elisabeth, let me kick it off with you.

Since Loganberry is such an esteemed and longstanding institution, what have you seen that you would attribute this remarkable renaissance to?

On the large scale, I would say what I attribute it to culturally is the fact that we are still embodied beings living in an increasingly disembodied world.

AI brings us, you know, all sorts of things, which is a separate conversation.

But even Amazon, even if you're ordering a physical book from them, You're doing, you're engaging with that book choice, and it gets to you last minute, sort of physically.

And whenever people walk in the front door at Loganberry, the first thing, almost always the first thing they say after, oh my gosh, how beautiful, is, it smells so good.

And I think that we don't only want physical books, which of course can be zipped to your front door according to various algorithms, or suggested to you on TikTok via various algorithms, But I think a lot of the book talk that's actually bringing people into Loganberry, and I know other independent stores, is not so much book talkers, TikTok creators coming in and recommending a specific book.

They're stepping into the space and saying, look at this beautiful place I'm in right now.

Don't you wish you could be here too?

And I think that that is a huge contributor.

Dave, let me ask you, because you've recently moved to a new and expanded space, what trends have you seen to account for this turnaround?

The trends that are coming up now, I opened in 2007, I thought it was gonna hit back then.

So I'm a little late to the game here.

But what I'm seeing is basically, I think it started probably about 15 or 20 years ago where people are looking to get back to basics.

They want the individual product.

They don't wanna be sold something from a corporate environment that's basically just profit motivated.

They want the real thing, as you were referring to.

And we're seeing that now.

And I think there was always a sense of people enjoying reading.

And now as they wrestle with technology, and the velocity in which that technology is controlling us speed-wise, we're trying to slow down and enjoy things a little bit.

And I just think this is gonna accelerate even more so as time goes on and we learn how to wrestle this technology and take control of it instead of it controlling us.

Right.

Mordecai?

Well, ThirdSpace is so named for a reason.

I think that this resurgence is very much a part of a desire for connection.

People are looking for places to gather, places outside of home, outside of work.But also, I should note that ThirdSpace is a capital B Black bookstore.

And that's important because that puts us in the tradition of Black bookstores nationally and locally that have always been about more than just retail.

It's always been about more than just the book itself.

It's always been about community.

And so we welcome this resurgence because it's not just about selling books.

It's really about equipping our community with information but also inspiration.

Craig?

Well, I would basically reiterate a lot of what everybody said.

One of the things I always hear is when people come in, how great the place smells when they smell those books.

But I think what it's really about is that personal connection that you make when somebody is showing you a book and making a recommendation.

Yeah, Amazon has recommendations, but they're impersonal.

It's an algorithm.

You know, when I make a recommendation, I'm telling somebody about a book I read, that I liked, why I liked it.

And that human person-to-person connection is really kind of what it's all about.

It's easy to go after Amazon, but I'm sorry, I'm gonna go after Barnes& Noble a little bit too.

I call it just a glorified warehouse.

The experience of reading belongs in a cultural, astute environment, and all of us know look at that environment and try to enhance the learning experience and the creative process of searching a new book out.

You go into Barnes& Noble, it's bottom line.

It's just buy the book, they treat it like a commodity.

None of us are treating our experiences like a commodity.

It's more— not all about profit and loss.

It's about sharing an experience with somebody and trying to turn someone on to something new.

Give them a cafe, give them music, give them a beautiful place to sit, they'll enjoy the entire experience of it.

It seems like a central and recurring theme here is that of community.

So I'm curious to hear a little bit more.

For example, how do you endeavor to reflect and serve your community while also participating and growing with it?

I mean, I think one of the things that we try to do is have events for the local community.

You know, we have authors come in We try to make sure that it's going to be somebody that's interesting, especially a local author.

We've done that quite a few times, and I'm really proud of how that response has been because people love meeting somebody in their community, or at least the larger community area, who wrote a book and did something that, you know, maybe they feel they could do.

It might inspire them, or at the very least, it'll give them something interesting to think about.

I think that element of having a path forward for local self-published authors to have some sort of experience with the store is so important.

It is a really different way of going about business than the way that we are interacting with the big bestsellers.

You know, we make those available too, the greats, the kind of people that you will see here at the City Club stage.

But being able to say, we talk a lot at Loganberry about finding a path to yes, for our community, and it's not automatic.

And, you know, we appreciate people waiting and working with us as we're like, well, if we do it that way, that's not gonna be sustainable, but how can we make it sustainable?

And if we're asked something often enough, then that's a sign to us as people who are also living and sharing that community, we need to find a path to yes with you.And so, we've created a program at Loganberry called Local Voices, which is specifically structured around consignment sales to make it sustainable for us to say, yes, you know, bring in 3 copies of your self-published book, and, you know, here's the structure we have so that it doesn't get out of— 'cause saying yes, that's a lot of people.

We get probably 25 requests a week from local self-published authors, and you have to find a way to contain that.

But it, even though it was tricky, and it's not gonna immediately contribute to, as Dave said, the bottom line, finding a path to yes with your community is so essential to staying in your community.

Yeah, I think the balance between the bottom line and art, you've got to be— we're more cognizant of that.

We try to balance it out more.

In a lot of cases, more corporate environments aren't doing that.

And, you know, more than likely you find that on the nonprofit side.

We're on the for-profit side doing this.

I always tell people that our store reflects my own interests, the interests of the staff, and our audience and the people who come into the store, and they're reflected by the used books they bring into us, which is great because then they come in and, you know, they— we give them a decent price for the books and then it represents what they were reading prior.So, and then we always keep track of what people are reading.

So it's just one big swirling whirlpool of just what everyone's interested in.

That's the uniqueness of what each one of us brings to the table instead of walking in any city.

To one store, it's always the same wherever you go.

We're all individuals.

You like tennis shoes, he sells tennis shoes.

You like dresses, he sells dresses.

I sell hats.

But we're all a little different in what we do.

Yeah, well, ThirdSpace exists for our community.

And before we were a bookstore, we were a place where a whole bunch of things could happen.

We have had everything from bridal showers to baby showers to final memorials.

And even as the bookstore started to emerge as like an actual thing, people felt like this was a space for them, for us, and we were always building community.

And I'll also say that It's important to note that nobody asked us to become a bookstore.

Nobody asked us to bring a bookstore to Glenville, but this is our offering in a way.

I am a Black books nerd.

I mean, I wake up, I actually, I go to sleep listening to books, but I wanted that to be like the invitation for people to learn more about our collective experience.

And we created these different business models in order to really keep this space alive.

And I won't go too far into that.

But, you know, it's working.

It's amazing.

That's amazing.

You know, my favorite part of doing the author events at the library is just seeing the attendees' face they're about to meet their favorite author, it can be a life-changing experience.

I'm going to dig a little deeper and ask each of you, has there been an author, book, event, maybe even a customer, but just an aha moment when you realized you were doing something much bigger than selling books?

So with Visible Voice Books, you know, we're doing We have a cafe, we do books, and we do music.

Everything kind of focuses around the books and plays off of that, but each piece is as strong as the other piece.

So, you know, we first— I was surprised when we first opened it.

Well, we moved in November.

The attendance and the way people felt about the place when they came in there, and I'm seeing it daily, that it's not so much it's about the store, how happy they are to have someplace to go, but But there's something proud about it being in Cleveland.

And the people, when they walk in, they're like, yes, this is what we're about.

We're representing something more than that.

And that really shook me.

And now I feel like I have more of a responsibility to represent not just what we're trying to do, but make sure we keep it true to what I feel the city's about.

So it kind of, when we opened up, and then we had some monks come in and bless the place, and I definitely needed that too.

So that was important right on.

Some people say I need another blessing.

Yeah.

I worked in— Loganberry was actually my first job ever that I had in college, and it got me interested in book business, and I went and worked in publishing in New York for about 10 years, a little over, came back, came back to Loganberry, and the wonderful thing about returning to bookselling, to being on this side of the reader interface, if you will, after years away on the sort of theoretical side of sitting in an office and saying, Well, readerships are looking for this, and a certain kind of reader doesn't want that, is that when you come back and you engage with real people, real readers, it gets a lot more complicated and a lot more magical, because when you leave the readership behind for real readers, new things are possible And it's been so wonderful to discover that even though, yes, on the broad scale of, you know, this kind of genre reader isn't normally interested in a weird mashup with a nonfiction side to it, or a poetry side.

Jim, who lives down the street, who I get to know, and who comes in every week, is interested in that, and for very particular reasons, and it opens up new ways that I can be a better bookseller also, because I won't write people off as— and this is the case for any kind of real human interaction, right?

That the more that we have, the more complicated.

It doesn't change the big trends that have to be faced and have to be dealt with.

Those things remain true on the large scale.

But when we don't think of individuals as being just encapsulations of trends, that opens up deeper relationship and greater flourishing for all of us, I think.

I would agree with that.

I mean, the one thing that I've really enjoyed about having local authors and new authors come in is it's not just the big name publishers or the big currently popular author.

It's something that's strange, something that's new, something that's challenging, and just getting to see that has been a really big surprise for me, how great the response for it has been, and I've really enjoyed seeing that.

And at Parallel Universe Books, you know, we specialize in science fiction and fantasy, and the big authors and big publishers, they don't really challenge things.

They don't go, into new areas as often as I would like, and we get to publish the weird stuff that nobody else carries.

And I think that's a really good niche to be in because it encourages people to find something new, and that is the best way to expand your mind.

I would just add that we didn't necessarily bring bookselling experience to the reading room.

In fact, one of our biggest challenges was Evelyn, my partner here, had to convince me to allow us to sell these books.

I was like, no, these are mine.

But over time, we have actually evolved into a legitimate bookstore because of the people who work at the ThirdSpace Reading Room.

They're in the back, Dr.

Bebe, Lexington, Savannah, Sierra's outside, Celia's back at the ranch.

These are people who welcome you into the door and you know that you're in a place where people love you and care about you.But also, Last night we had a packed house.

Actually, we had more people than chairs who came out to hear from Cleveland's very own Tiffany Cross, who is on a book tour right now.But I think the last thing I'll say is that it's so important for us to put living authors in contact with their community.

And so it is an honor every time we get to welcome someone into the space, especially people who are from Cleveland.And so that's, I would say, one of the most magical parts of being the Reading Room.

And these are all inspiring stories.

I have to share an anecdote because earlier this week we hosted an event with author Merlin Sheldrake.

And before the event, he was just asking a little bit about the libraries, the bookstores, because I was telling him about Book Fest had just ended, and he came from the UK and shared that they were closing a lot of the libraries.

When I told him about what we were doing here, he said, this sounds like a progressive utopia.

Great.

Yeah, that's all.

We did it.

Yeah, brilliant.

And then he said, it sounds like a self-perpetuating system that feeds itself.

And also, he's an expert on fungal networks, so I'm sure there's a metaphor in there somewhere.

But first of all, I thought that was brilliant.

And I think we kind of underappreciate what we have going on here.

So let me ask you all too, is how does it— how does it feel to be part of this ecosystem and supporting each other?

Because it's community.

It doesn't sound like it's competitive.

It's like the rising ocean raises all ships thing.

How does it— I mean, I can only speak for myself, but it feels great.

I mean, My wife and I, we opened about a year ago, as mentioned earlier, and every bookstore that we've talked to, every bookstore owner, every bookstore employee, everybody has been so welcoming and so encouraging.

It's been fantastic.

An example of that is I'm gonna give a shout out to MaxPax.

They're moving, that's why they're not here today.

Everyone should go visit MaxPax.

Stop at our place first on the way, but then go I go to MaxPax.

But actually, I kind of get aggravated about some of this stuff because people forget the lure of the city.

We were the 5th biggest city in the country at one time.

That structure of knowledge, of financial wherewithal, it's still here.

And what doesn't happen is we spend $500 million on a stadium to move to Brook Park that some billionaire has, as opposed to taking some of that money and just promoting what we have here.

We have music, we have arts, We've got the Cleveland Art Museum.

We have a book literary scene here that's growing by the year, and nobody sees it 'cause it's so small, 'cause the emphasis, and there's nothing wrong with it, people are into sports, they're running around so fast, there's not as much time anymore, but if some of that budget being used to finance billionaires, to move a stadium out of the core of the city, was spent on us and the cultural environment, that's a reason people would come to town.

We're the largest freshwater in the country, and we can't even get to it because we got Burke Lake fronting for it.

In from out of town all the time.

They find us randomly or they're visiting somebody and they're like, I had no idea Cleveland had all these great cultural things.

You receive a book tour coming in from Erie, Pennsylvania.Exactly.

Yeah, I mean, there's— that's low-hanging fruit.

But I mean, we've got the libraries, we've got the museums, we've got all kinds— we have got a world-class food scene, a world-class art scene, we've got Playhouse Square.

And nobody knows about it.

It skips right over the top of it.

And I think, you know, I can think of many a time, more than I can count on one hand, of times that fellow booksellers around the city have saved my bacon because I am short on something or can't find something.

And there is a very open and cooperative relationship there.

But I'll also note, much to Dave's point, that being part of this ecosystem, it's not just bookstores, it's— people often kind of raise an eyebrow about how I talk about the bookstores and the libraries kind of in one voice, because I think that the opportunity to own our own books that are precious to us is really important, and bookstores offer that.

But we need something much bigger than that, which libraries offer.

And something that often gets left out of the conversation is public schools have to be included in the way that we talk and think about our cultural ecosystem.

Because if we keep depriving and keep sucking money from the schools that are open to everyone, then we lose— who's coming next?

Who will be after me?

Who will be after us on this stage?

And yes, there are still schools, but the idea that it is only for those who have tuition payments is distressing to me because we've got public schools down the street from us.

If we support public libraries, then I think we should support public schools, and it all supports each other.

That's the ecosystem I'm proud to be part of.Right on.

Yeah.

You talk about the literature rates dropping.

I really question how literature is actually introduced.

You know, in grade school, sure, but once they get to middle school, there's so many different distractions or interests kids have, unless you're hitting them with something very interesting, they're not gonna jump into it.

And it seems to me that everything's so much based around test scores and not so much about falling in love with the book, it's a problem.

There's a break there.

And that certainly extends to adult readers as well.Yeah.

You know, I can somewhat relate to how your relationship with reading changes over time.

You know, for some people, well, this may be news to a lot of you, but I was a football player.

I played football in college.

And I'm one of those former football players who had so much trauma connected to conditioning and working out and training that I'm not a person who runs for fun, right?

I think a lot of people feel the same way about about reading.

They're like, okay, I was forced to read as either homework or as punishment.

And so people, when they get older, they're like, I'm not eating vegetables and I'm not reading.

But I think what we're trying to— what we need to do, and I think this is the benefit of having such a robust literary ecosystem from the funder side, from the bookseller side, from the library, we have a place where we can liberate the information within the, you know, the binding, and ensure that people can connect with the ideas that these authors are trying to convey.

And that's a real opportunity.

Yeah, definitely.

And I can say from experience, I've always been a huge reader since I was 10 years old and read my first copy of Starship Troopers.But As soon as a book was assigned in school, the way they taught it was so boring and so dull.

It just— I hated every single one of them.

I was fortunate that my parents were more than willing to indulge my excessive reading when I was in grade school and high school, but not everybody has that.

And I think the fact that libraries and bookstores around here do give kids that opportunity and adults that opportunity is one of the great things about this area.It's the resurgence of the bookstore is due in large part to that, I think, because people are hungry for it.

Well, see, and I think The Atlantic, which I do read monthly and subscribe to, they got caught flat-footed here because they caught the trend maybe a couple of years ago.

What you have going on now is totally— I've even seen in the last 2 years, there's a— people are They wanna change, they want a slowness aspect to life, they wanna get off their phones.

Again, that's all good stuff, but the velocity of technology has made things too fast.

People are recognizing it.

People wanna get back to reading, and it's happening now.

And part of the literature issues, I wonder how much of it has to do with economics.

In the '70s, that's when literary rates were the highest.Now they've dropped 15, 20 points.

People are trying to survive.

They don't have time to read.

It's on its way up.

I'm here to say things are looking good.

Took a while, but I think it's definitely going in the right direction.

And I think they missed.

I think they're a little bit behind on it.

And they do like to preach the end of everything.So, but still a great magazine, but you know, yeah, right, right.

Yeah, we've been hearing about the decline of reading forever.

Yes.

And to that point, I also think we could keep in mind that there's a lot more competition for attention.

Now, and it's not that shocking.

You think about, starting several generations back, people started tearing their hair out about, you know, people are getting married less and less, or they're, you know, women are getting married older and older, and that's not necessarily in and of itself a terrible thing.

It's thinking about what if when they come to reading, they come to it for joy instead of just, I'm sitting in an empty room with nothing else in it, and there's nothing else to do, because reading in and of itself, I don't think is a pure good.

It's, it's, you know, anything can be written down and read, but we have the opportunity now to create a world where people who are reading are really wanting to read, not just doing it because there's literally nothing else to do.

And world literacy rates have actually increased by 20% in the last, last 20 to 30 years.So, you know, there's a couple different things going on there.

Yeah.

And whenever I see those essays, I always like to go and look at the actual research, whether it's the survey or study.

And what I found interesting is how the surveys are worded.

For example, sometimes it'll say literary reading, like what, what amount of literary.

And in some studies that refers to novels and short stories.

Sometimes they use the term reading for pleasure, like how much time do you spend reading for pleasure.

And I have a lot of friends who can read a 7-volume history of, you know, ancient Rome but they'd say it's not for pleasure because, you know, I'm learning stuff.So how do we, you know, dissect some of the way the wording is on these things?

I think you're all right in a sense that people are reading more than ever, but it's maybe how we frame like what we want to count as reading.

Another point is, is if you go back, you can literally go back hundreds of years and every 10 to 20 years you'll see another essay like that.

It is, oh, the kids these days.

It's every 20 years making the exact same complaints like clockwork.

And that— there, I think the earliest one I remember goes back to pre-colonial America, you know, before the Revolution.

And it just goes to show, for everything that changes, nothing really does.

I think the kids are gonna be all right.

They've got a little ways to go.

I think we've managed this far.

I think We're generally doing okay, but at the same time, yeah, let's get them to get more books.

We're gonna turn it over to some audience questions here in a couple minutes.

I'll throw one more question out to the group here.

Can I follow up on that real quick?

Absolutely.

The other problem, the publishing world's still, even though there's 8 main ones, it's still fragmented.

There's no national campaign to get people to read.

You know, the government does a little bit, but like the NFL, I mean, they're pumping, they own TV stations and everything.

It's hard to compete against.

If there was one, like, drink milk, there was a milk campaign, for God's sakes.

There's no literary campaign to read, making it more cool to read.

It's all underground, but it keeps going.

Bring back Book It.

I was in school way back in the day.

They were giving Cavs tickets away, right?

So if you read a couple books, they'd give you tickets to go see the Cavs at the Gundervina, and a personal pan pizza.

Now I'm a great reader.

Just an idea.

Sorry to mean that.

No, not at all.

That's a good segue.

I have one more question here.

Imagine we're sitting on this stage again 10 years from now.

What do you hope the role of the independent bookstore will be here in town?

What will life be like, and what do you think will have to happen for us to get there?

I think we're kind of there.

You know, we've got— we have a very vibrant network there.

I mean, More people coming in to read would definitely— buying books would help.

But attracting them in, that's what we're all working on in different methods.

And that way of doing it is kind of— it's working.

I think when literacy rates did fall, that's when a lot of bookstores, the way they did in the old days, they aged out.

The stores aged out a little bit.

And I think now you're seeing a different approach to it.

And I think this model is going to compete very heavily with the bigger people out there.

I would like to know in 10 years, I, you know, hope to still be around and working in bookselling in 10 years.

I hope to find that independent booksellers have found a way to become a place where readers can come and find a trustworthy source of knowing that the book they're buying is written by a real person.

And not by a robot.

And that's easier said than done.

The challenges that await us to figure out how we as curators, as— I work as an editor also— as people working in books are going to really figure out how to honestly communicate to consumers and readers what it is they're buying is not an easy one to answer, but I think it's a question we have to take seriously, and one that I hope in 10 years from now, If someone comes in the door of Loganberry and says, you know, is this book by a real person?

I can say yes, and I know that person, and here's how the research was done, or what have you.

I hop to be one of the truly dependable places people can come and find written-by-human work.

Right.

Well done.

Yeah.

My hope is that what's going on with the independent bookstores becoming that third space that is always talked about just continues as a trend.

I think it's an important location to have a third space for people to meet outside of work, outside of home, where they can meet people that's not their family, not just their coworkers, and they can experience and interact with different ideas, different people, different viewpoints.

And I really hope that that continues to grow.

And that's one of the things I'm trying to make sure we're doing.

Well, speaking of ThirdSpace, call me in, you know.

10 years from now, Cleveland is at the top of the list of the happiest, most connected cities in the country.

There you go.

And the epicenter of the new Black Arts Movement started in Glenville.

Great.

Well, they always say the darkest hour is right before dawn.

So, you know, Visible Voice Books, we're here, the lights are on, and I honestly think that we're leaving a dark time and things are gonna get better and it'll be reflected in what people want to read and actually open themselves up to more of that.

So I'm coming in with a positive look at everything, but how it relates to the books and in the environment itself that we're in.

Wonderful.Well, we're about to begin the audience Q&A.

For those just tuning in via our livestream or radio audience, I'm Bill Kelly, Adult Programming Manager for Cuyahoga County Public Library.

And moderator for today's conversation.

I'm here with leadership from 4 of your favorite local independent bookstores talking about how their shops connect people, improve communities, and rekindle the joy of reading.

We welcome questions from everyone in the room, City Club members, guests, and those joining via our live stream at cityclub.org, live radio broadcast at 89.7 WKSU, IdeaStream Public Media.

If you'd like to text a question for our speakers, please text it to 330-541-5794.

That's 330-541-5794.

And City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

May we have the first question, please?

I'm director of Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.

For Cuyahoga County.

We're her— the local program partner for the program.

It's so great to be part of a good news story.

We, we had some bad news a few weeks ago, losing Dolly, but her legacy is going to live on and grow.

And we know that it's making a difference.

And we hope that the 98,000 children who've been enrolled in the program in Cuyahoga County and have received close to 3 million books so far since the program started here, are going to be your future customers along with their families.

So I'm just curious to know, well, can you help us track that in the coming years?

And then I'm wondering what the age ranges are of your customer base.

Like, are you seeing a mix of younger, older families, etc.?

I will take this one first just because in next week I will have been at Loganberry full-time for 9 years.

And I have seen the average age of our average customer drop by multiple decades in the last 5 years, and I think BookTok is really a huge contributor behind that, but it's really exciting to me to see, as someone who is working, I mostly work weekdays, but I work evenings also, and seeing a whole new generation of really young people, and a lot of families coming in, saying, my daughter found you on, you know, saw a YouTube video of you or saw you on TikTok and asked us to come.

And so we drove for 2 hours to get here.

We hear that a lot, which is great.

And obviously, those are the people who are old enough to talk and speak and read and maybe have some money of their own.

But it's also wonderful seeing young families come in, often with their first baby in arm or still in utero, shopping for that next generation of readers.

But I can say emphatically that our readership, our customer base, has gotten a lot younger and bigger over the last 5 years.

I will say since we moved, I'm seeing a lot more children, a lot more young people from 25, younger.

The group that I'm seeing less of is like 38 to 55, and I think that's the busiest group.

I also think that books on tape I think that group is a lot more leaning into that world because they're able to do it and multitask at the same time.

Yeah, having books for young kids was always really important to me.

So we did make sure we have a good selection of that all the way from the very youngest learning to read books through middle grade, young adult, and then of course into adult.

Now our biggest group of customers is probably young families.So I'm seeing a lot of people coming in that have, you know, little kids with them.

They're helping the kids pick the books, or the kids are coming and saying, hey, this is the book I want.

I've been waiting for the next one of this to come out.

And so that's really exciting to see.

We have books for everybody from, you know, cradle to the clouds.

I don't have those numbers, but you guys see the people people in the back for that.

Hello, I'm Laura Delaney, and I'm actually asking a question about the current atmosphere of book bannings in the United States.

And I'm most curious of what have you seen in terms of trends in the frontlist publishing from both large and small publishers and how that culture of banning books has impacted what publishers are putting out.

And also what you are doing in your own stores to protect those voices that have been hidden.

Well, I'll say at our store, there's a small level of defiance in what we do.

So obviously, we have issues with book bans, and we make a point of making sure a lot of those books that are banned are in our store.

I mean, once you— the minute you walk into our store, you see a poster of Nazis burning books, and a quote from Roosevelt saying, this is what we're fighting.

So, you know, we emphasize that, that this is— we're a place of learning, and there's no room for hate or ignorance.

And the best you could do is just curate around that as much as possible.

I also think that this is a place where the independent bookstores are really key in the healthy ecosystem, healthy literary ecosystem, because no matter what direction, true censorship is, at the highest scale, is a government-funded project, right?

So we're not funded by the government, so we can do, and all things being what they are and challenged as they are, the Bill of Rights that we have in this country is still a lot more robust than others for private citizens, and we as private citizens running non-government projects organizations.

Now, obviously, it then behooves us to organize as much as we can to help support the libraries and the schools, 'cause those are really the places that are seeing the kind of censorship that you're talking about, and because those are the most publicly accessible, those are the places that citizens are supposed to have a right to.

The bookstore is sort of a cherry on top, but an increasingly important cherry on top.

I don't know that I've seen in frontlist publishing that much of a change yet, just because more books are being published now than ever before, and publishers are sort of pushing— we're sort of reaching the— pushing the possibility of how many books can you physically publish and still sell copies of.

But I would say that most publishers I know are sort of very actively trying to publish things that, at least on the surface, say, You know, this is pushing back against, you know, the kind of books that we see banned most often.

How that looks down the line, how that'll look 5 years from now, I'm not sure.

Off of that, as far— I mean, the broad spectrum of books coming from different populations and different segments of the population is more broad now than it's ever— we were talking about that earlier.

It's much more broad than it's ever been.

And like I said, as someone who is in the lineage of the Black bookstore, this is— very familiar.

These times are familiar, and that's why we need our stories so much.

It's hard to even keep up with how many books are being banned, and certainly with our collection, somebody would want to ban all of them, but that's not going to stop us, you know.

We're part of a culture that has always navigated around these types of threats, so if it's not in print, best believe it's going to be oral, you know.

We're going to find a way to get these stories out into the world.

And publicly owned bookstores that are very large like Barnes& Noble, they're a hedge fund.

They're just, all they're doing, it's about making money.

If they want to sell that business, which they're going to do with a hedge fund every 5 years or so, they're going to lay off controversy.

They are definitely going to look at dollars over what's the right thing to do versus not the right thing to do.

You just heard from all of us, the individual way we were handling this, you're gonna get a different story from those guys.

It's gonna be more about dodging stuff so they don't have a problem down the road.

Yeah, I can't say that we've been around long enough to really see any changes in publishing because we're just very new, but one of the things that I have added upstairs and is very important and has been very popular is a democracy section, which is there for no particular reason whatsoever, right?

Just because But it has been very popular because the last thing I want to do is see democracy become a fantasy like the other books in the store.

Yikes.

Yeah, yeah.

Well said.

Well said.

I think the Cleveland area can be proud of the fact that I think we rank in the top 20 markets internationally for use of ebooks, but I'm wondering how that affects the livelihood of independent booksellers, and if you know, even a step backward, how that's affecting the livelihood of authors.

I just dated myself by calling them books on tape, but that's what I was— I think that— but that's what I was referring to.

I think, you know, if any way people can get into a book If it's reading it, which I obviously prefer and definitely advocate to everybody here to come in and read a book, but if you can't, read an ebook.

When you have time, you'll go back and read it, but people should read any way they can find the time to do it, and I think you're seeing a massive increase in those too.

Well, I know there is, and I think that's how people, and I see that as a trend, which is also gonna lead back into people reading in general when they have time.

Yeah, I definitely think that ebooks have their place.

I think my biggest, not complaint, but sadness about them is I think they've taken the place of the mass market paperback, and I really miss that.

I think mass market paperbacks were such a great entry point for so many people that was affordable and easy to carry around, and now the ebook has taken its place, which I get the economics of it, but I just think it's a sad transition that has been made.

It's important to note that at least one important A national partner for independent bookstores, Bookshop.org, has been offering ebooks for the past year almost, and Libro.fm, which is a key— if you get audiobooks, you get your audiobooks through Libro.fm.

Choose one of us or all local bookstores to support, and they're gonna start having ebooks also.

And also thinking about how important ebooks are in the library ecosystem is so important that they and audiobooks, for different reasons, can offer so much accessibility that a fixed paper object cannot, as much as I love that beautiful, good-smelling object.

And yeah, the question about how it's affecting authors, I think, is inseparable from the larger publishing ecosystem questions of how more and more and more books are being published, and the margins are getting thinner and thinner.

Everywhere.

I don't think it's separable from that, and that is an important thing to talk about, and it's a big insoluble knot that I don't think any of us up here have the answer to right now.

Hi there, Laura Walter with Cleveland Public Library.

I'm curious how you would approach your relationship with small presses, especially, say, a local small press or micro press.

If they came to you, what advice would you have in terms of how you would most like to work with them productively?

I mean, Microcosm is based out in California, but they have a huge warehouse near Cleveland, and the ownership is here.

At one time, they actually, they worked with one of the people who worked for me, Nick Perry, and they did a book together, and it was published.

It was about Cleveland.

It's one of our best-selling books.

So it just depends.

There's a lot of them out there, and, you know, I personally will pick one or use some if I think it fits the aesthetic of where we're coming from, but there's so many, they multiply very, very quickly.

You do have to curate them.

Yeah, that's something I found as well, because I am a big fan of the small press.

Like I said, you find the more weird books, for lack of a better term, coming from a lot of the small press who are willing to take those chances, but as Dave mentioned, you do have to curate them, They don't have the same kind of resources, so you don't know what the editing quality is going to be.

You don't know what— how they're going to— how well their books are going to be made until you've seen a few of them.

So it is something you do have to take into consideration.

Hi everyone, Dawn Arrington here.

Hey Mordecai.

I've worked with a few of you up here on stage.

I'm the president of Larkshire Reports Fest, so we have this community the event that, you know, participates with bookstores.

And my question is, is like, what is our call to action outside of reading more books and purchasing more books, right?

But what else is there for us to do as the consumers, as the readers, as the people that are keeping this ecosystem going?

Specifically, what should we be doing?

Keep talking about independent bookstores and like amplifying your favorite ones.

I would say everybody should be thinking about how to make reading fun and interesting and cool.

And so what's really important is that we commit to creating a culture where we appreciate ideas.

And just as much as it's important to share like what you're eating and these like cute pictures of like meals and kicks and stuff like that on social.

I'm an old millennial, so I don't know what people put on social anymore, but share some books, you know?

That's my first recommendation.

Yeah, I would say, you know, I think ideas ebb and flow, and what's amazing still is the fact that there is this cultural flow of information that's out there that goes back to the beginning of our country.

I mean, Emerson, Walt Whitman all the way through, and it's still there.

And you're here 'cause you've found that world, so what you can do is, I mean, you may not wanna open another bookstore and compete with us and try to get that message out.

That might be a little too much conflict, but the more people you talk to just about the idea of reading, I mean, it's a whole different art.

It makes you see people in a different world.

It makes you see people from a different perspective.

It opens up your thought process.

All the arts have different things that do that, and a lot of people spend so much time on sports or video games, and I totally understand it.

I was up till midnight watching the Browns, but there's other things out there.

How much of that can we control?

I don't think you can.It just, you never know what's gonna change something.

A movie like O Brother, Where Art Thou?

came out in 1994, and all of a sudden everyone's listening to bluegrass, and they still are now.

So it doesn't take much.

Maybe a movie comes out about people reading and people start, reading more, as long as we keep going what we're doing, literature's gonna be fine, but it sure would be great if it could grow, but it's never been as big, popular.

Allen Ginsberg used to get mad that he wasn't as popular as Chuck Berry.

He's a poet.

It's just not gonna happen, but there's a world for it, and it can grow more, and the more you talk about how much you enjoy reading, it's probably the thing you can probably do, but I just think over time it's gonna go in that direction.

I also think talking about why you are choosing to invest in local independent businesses is important.

The reasons why, not just like, I mean, one of them is, oh, I love Loganberry so much, and I, you know, or Visible Voice, or ThirdSpace, or Parallel Universe, but sort of saying to friends, and I know it takes extra effort for me to order my books from them, but I realized I want them to be there, and so I have to do that.

I think talking about the places in your life where you're willing to embrace a little bit, You could do the same thing about getting hardware.

Like, man, I could insta-order that picture hanger today and not have to go out, but I'm going to think about where in my weekend I could fit in stopping by the hardware store, and that's going to keep that community resource there.

Talking that way with your community and your friends about the places where you're willing to lean into friction a little bit, and it's different for different— for all of us at different parts of our lives, you know, and different economic places that we're at and different challenges we face.

But you know who you are if you could introduce a little bit of friction into your life, a little bit of an extra step that keeps something alive in your community.

I think that's the mission.

That's an excellent, excellent point.

And I think the biggest thing is just talk about what you're reading and explain to people why you're enjoying it and why you liked picking it up at the place you did.

But another thing is, I've heard a lot of stigma around people who do listen to audiobooks or read ebooks.

I think we need to reduce that.

Because that will lead people into— back to bookstores, whether they're getting their audiobooks from Libro.fm or from wherever, or their ebooks.

That will lead them back to the bookstores.And I think we need to destigmatize the idea that listening to a book is any different than reading a book.

Yeah, that's right.

That's a really good point about the economic aspect of it.

Every dollar you spend in that bookstore is not only benefiting them, but it's benefiting the community because we all live in the city or live in the region.

So we're going to spend, and the employees here, the bigger we get, those employees are going to spend the money here too, as opposed to those monies going back to somewhere in New York City or something, wherever our corporate headquarters is.

Well, we're almost out of time, but in the spirit of tonight, today's conversation, I'm going to ask you briefly to share one book you've recently read and enjoyed and throw it out to the audience.

And I'll start with you, Mordecai.

Briefly.

Okay.

A Few Rules for Predicting the Future, an essay by Octavia E. Butler.

Very nice.

Good job.

Kai Bird wrote the book about Robert Oppenheimer, 2008, 2009.

That's what the movie was based on.

I've been waiting for another book for a long time, and it's called American Scoundrel: The Life of Roy Cohn.

So I'm really— I haven't read it yet, but that's the next book I'm gonna read.

And he's an excellent writer.

So I'm gonna recommend something that I often reread this time of year, Lolly Willows by Sylvia Townsend Warner, the original witchy book, originally published in the 1920s.

If you come to Loganberry, you know I'm always gonna try to send you— sell you books that published a long time ago, but not— but that you didn't read in school.

That's sort of my sweet spot.

And Lolly Willows is about a woman who runs away from home and becomes a witch in the woods and maybe meets Satan.

That's up to you to decide.

My recommendation is something I read earlier this year.

It is There Is No Anti-Memetics Division by Quantum, and it is a cosmic horror novel about entities that devour memories.

And it is one of the creepiest, most dread-filled reads I've ever had, and I loved every single minute of it.

That sounds perfect.

Thank you to Mordecai Cargill, Dave Ferrante, Elisabeth Plumlee-Watson, and Anthony Craig Senatore for joining us at the City Club today.

I'm Bill Kelly, and this forum is now adjourned.

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