East Village Books

Erica Martin

Blog 1: East Village Books

99 St. Mark's Place (between Ave. A & First Ave.)

New York, NY 10009

(212) 477-8647

http://buyusedbooksnewyork.com/default.aspx

The door to East Village Books is red and crooked in its frame, with colored wood cutouts nailed to its front. The doorknob doesn’t turn all the way, so it’s a pain to push open. The store inside is long and skinny, with unfinished wood shelves along all the walls and down the middle of the room.

The books are organized by genre, including a section called “Anti This Establishment,” a jumbled collection of counterculture literature from the Beats to Lenny Bruce to Hunter S. Thompson. Donald, a longtime employee of the bookshop, calls this his favorite section because it holds books by Charles Bukowski, a writer who rarely appears in chain bookstores.

Donald is in his mid-forties, with glasses and a gray crew cut. He spoke in a rasp, and did not smile, but he was very talkative, and kept asking about the journalism program at NYU. He also introduced me to his son, a twelve year old boy sitting behind the desk, who did not look up from his computer.

“Karma,” Donald said, when I asked him why East Village Books has done so well for itself. “And location. We are also very aggressive in buying, and do our best to pay the most for your book.” East Village Books does pay well, but they only buy about one in fifty books that are brought to them.

“We don’t carry anything mainstream,” Donald said. “There’s no reason to. If people want the popular thing, they go to Barnes and Nobles.” He was right; I saw almost no recent bestsellers in the store, except a copy of The Nanny Diaries in the fiction section that seemed particularly out of place.

East Village Books deals often in estate libraries. They purchase books from poor old literature fiends who die and leave their libraries to relatives that don’t appreciate them. Donald showed me a collection they had just bought, a set of novels by all the classic authors; Dostoyevsky, Faulkner, Hemingway and the like. He expressed concern about whether they would sell. The books were bound in red leather with swirling patterns on the spine, the titles painted in gold.

“Those are beautiful,” I said.

“Yeah, I suppose they are,” said Donald. “But our philosophy books sell better.”

East Village Books also sells prints by Helmut Newton, a German photographer who apparently specialized in naked women. His complete works sells for $15,000, and the store sells individual prints for $100 each, which they bought from “some dead guy,” as Donald told me. He said that customers purchase the prints “not frequently, but often enough. A guy bought 7 prints once, and that really makes your day.”

The section of the store I found most intriguing is called “Backyard Books.” It’s a small outdoor area, behind a green door, protected from the elements only by a blue tarp. The books here are only a dollar or two. Some are useless; faded cookbooks with pictures of Martha Stuart looking about fifteen years old, and psychotherapy texts from the 1970’s. But I also saw some good novels, such as Vineland by Thomas Pyncheon, which were cheaper than I have seen them elsewhere.

Donald did smile once, as I said goodbye and shook his hand.

“Don’t let NYU get to you,” he said, as I struggled to twist open the door.