Dane Neller

Last updated
Dane Neller
Dane Neller.jpg
Neller in 2018
Born
Dane Joseph Neller

(1956-04-30) April 30, 1956 (age 67)
Alma mater Yale University (BA, MA, JD), New College, Oxford
OccupationBusinessman
Known forFounder of current incarnation of Shakespeare & Co. (2015)

Dane Joseph Neller (born April 30, 1956) is an American businessman and entrepreneur. He is best known as former chief executive of Dean & DeLuca, On Demand Books, and Shakespeare & Co.

Contents

Neller is CEO of New York-based bookstore chain Shakespeare & Co. [1] and is its largest shareholder since purchasing the company in 2015. [2] Under his leadership the company has added literary cafes and incorporated a point of sale state-of-the-art 3D book printing service that uses recycled paper and produces bookstore quality paperbacks through a patented technology. [3] Neller is also the CEO of On Demand Books LLC, which uses the printing technology in its Espresso Book Machine, which was named on Time magazine's “Best Inventions of 2007” list. [4]

Early life and education

Born in Evanston, Illinois, and raised in Highland Park, Illinois, Neller attended Deerfield High School in nearby Deerfield, Illinois. He attended Yale University as a political science major and graduated in 1979 with membership in Phi Beta Kappa and a B.A. summa cum laude, additionally earning an M.A. in political science with honors in 1980. Neller then studied for an M. Litt. in philosophy at New College, Oxford, before returning to Yale, where he earned a JD from Yale Law School. [5]

An accomplished tennis player, Neller was ranked 30th in the nation as a young junior. He played college tennis as an undergraduate and played number one on the Oxford University Lawn Tennis team.

Career

Following graduation from Yale Law School, Neller began his career at Morgan Stanley as an investment banker (1984–1987). After Morgan Stanley, Neller held various investment banking and private equity positions before joining Dean & Deluca in 1995 as an owner and CEO, a position he held until 2005. He and his partner, board chairman Leslie Rudd, expanded the New York-based gourmet food store chain into a national and global franchise. [6]

Neller sold his interest in Dean & Deluca in 2005 when he and Random House editorial director Jason Epstein founded On Demand Books. [7] The patented Espresso Book Machine® (EBM) print-at-retail technology was developed and commercialized by On Demand Books, now owned by Shakespeare & Co. The machine can print perfect bound books in a few minutes at the point of sale. [8] In 2015 Neller and partners purchased the last remaining U. S. Shakespeare & Co. store, a former chain. [9] Under Neller's ownership the iconic store has been recreated as a new iteration that now includes a literary café and incorporates the EBM at the point of sale. The company aims to become a national chain. At this point, there are three Shakespeare bookstores, two in Manhattan and one in Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia. [10] With access to millions of titles, the machine can print paperbacks in minutes while a customer waits. It is also a vehicle for self-publishing.

Awards

Neller and partner Jason Epstein won the 2011 Creative Disruptor Award for the Espresso Book Machine technology. [11]

Public service

Neller is on the board of trustees for New York City's Hunter College. [12]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barnes & Noble</span> American bookseller and retailer

Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. The company operates approximately 600 retail stores across all 50 U.S. states.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Powell's Books</span> Bookstore chain selling new and used books

Powell's Books is a chain of bookstores in Portland, Oregon, and its surrounding metropolitan area. Powell's headquarters, dubbed Powell's City of Books, claims to be the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world. Powell's City of Books is located in the Pearl District on the edge of downtown and occupies a full city block between NW 10th and 11th Avenues and between W. Burnside and NW Couch Streets. It contains over 68,000 square feet, about 1.6 acres of retail floor space.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chapters (bookstore)</span> Canadian big box bookstore brand

Chapters Inc. is a Canadian big box bookstore banner owned by Indigo Books and Music. Formerly a separate company competing with Indigo, the combined company has continued to operate both banners since their merger in 2001. As of July 2017, it operated 89 superstores under the banners Chapters and Indigo, and 122 small format stores under the banners Coles, Indigospirit, SmithBooks and The Book Company.

Waldenbooks was an American shopping mall-based bookstore chain operated by the Walden Book Company, Inc., and from 1995 was a subsidiary of Borders Group. The chain also ran a video game and software chain under the name Waldensoftware, as well as a children's educational toy chain under Walden Kids. In 2011, the chain was liquidated in bankruptcy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dean & DeLuca</span> American chain of upscale grocery stores

Dean & DeLuca is an American chain of upscale grocery stores. The first one was established in New York City's SoHo district by Joel Dean, Giorgio DeLuca and Jack Ceglic in September 1977. They were joined in September 1979 by Eugenio Pozzolini, who became a partner in 1981. It is headquartered in Wichita, Kansas. Since 2014, Dean & Deluca has been owned by Pace Development, a Thai luxury development company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Books Kinokuniya</span> Japanese bookstore chain

Books Kinokuniya is a Japanese bookstore chain operated by Kinokuniya Company Ltd., founded in 1927, with its first store located in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. Its name translates to "Bookstore of Kii Province". The company has its headquarters in Meguro, Tokyo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kramers (bookstore)</span> Independent bookstore in Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C., United States

Kramers is an independent bookstore and cafe in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Since its founding in 1976 by Bill Kramer, Henry Posner, and David Tenney, Kramer's has become a local institution and meeting place for neighborhood residents, authors, and politicians. It was one of the first bookstores in the country to feature a cafe which influenced similar business models nationwide. Notable people that have visited Kramer's include Barack Obama, Andy Warhol, Maya Angelou, and Monica Lewinsky, whose purchases at the bookstore attracted national attention during the Lewinsky scandal investigation and led to a high-profile legal battle. Kramer's was sold in 2016 to Steve Salis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shakespeare and Company (bookstore)</span> English-language bookstore in Paris

Shakespeare and Company is an English-language bookstore opened in 1951 by George Whitman, located on Paris's Left Bank.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Printers Inc. Bookstore</span>

Printers Inc. Bookstore (1978–2001) was an independent bookstore in Palo Alto and Mountain View, California, that closed in 2001. Printers Inc is referenced in sonnets 8.13-8.16 of Vikram Seth's 1986 novel, The Golden Gate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amazon Books</span> Bookstore chain by Amazon.com

Amazon Books was a chain of retail bookstores owned by online retailer Amazon. The first store opened on November 2, 2015, in Seattle, Washington. On March 2, 2022, it was reported that all Amazon Books would close on various dates in the future.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harvard Book Store</span> Shopping mall in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Harvard Book Store is an independent and locally owned seller of used, new, and bargain books in Cambridge's Harvard Square.

Lightning Source is a printer and distributor of print-on-demand books. The company is a business unit of Ingram Content Group. Originally incorporated in 1996 as Lightning Print Inc., the company is headquartered in La Vergne, Tennessee, United States. Its UK operations are based in Milton Keynes. They also have operations in Maurepas, France and Melbourne, Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Schuler Books & Music</span> Bookstore

Schuler Books is an independent bookseller with four locations across the U.S. state of Michigan. Along with new and used books, Schuler stores feature an extensive gift section, magazines, print on demand services, event spaces, and a café.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Espresso Book Machine</span> Print-on-demand machine

The Espresso Book Machine (EBM) is a print on demand (POD) machine created by On Demand Books. It prints, collates, covers, and binds a single book in a few minutes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">McNally Jackson</span> Independent bookstore in New York City

McNally Jackson Books is an independent bookstore based in Manhattan, New York, owned and operated since 2004 by Sarah McNally, a former editor at Basic Books and the child of Holly and Paul McNally, the founders of the Canadian McNally Robinson Booksellers chain. McNally Jackson's publishing arm is McNally Editions, devoted to rediscovering unduly neglected books. McNally Jackson also operates two Goods for the Study stationery stores on Mulberry Street and West 8th Street.

Town Center at Lake Forest Park is a multi-purpose shopping center that also serves as the community hub for the city of Lake Forest Park, Washington. Built in 1964, the center is located on the eastern side of Lake Forest Park, on the western shore of Lake Washington in a suburb of Seattle on Bothell Way NE beside City Hall. The southeast side of the center abuts the Burke-Gilman Trail.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">World Bank Infoshop</span> Defunct nonprofit bookstore in the U.S.

The InfoShop was a non-profit bookstore in Washington, D.C., run by the World Bank specializing in "economics and international development ... current events, history, banking and finance, plus travel guides, reference books and international fiction", including discounted and remaindered books. The shop offered discounts to students, and to customers who worked in government, NGOs, or the World Bank. The shop also sold children's books, world music CDs, books and audio for learning languages, gifts, and stationery supplies with the World Bank logo.

African-American bookstores, also known as black bookstores, are bookstores owned and operated by African Americans. These stores often, although not always, specialize in works by and about African Americans and their target customers are often African Americans. Although they are a variety of African-American business, African-American bookstores have often been closely tied to radical political movements including Marxism, Black Power, and pan-Africanism. The first documented African-American bookstore was established by the abolitionist David Ruggles in 1834. The first African-American bookstore to open in Harlem was Young's Book Exchange. One of the earliest African-American bookstores to achieve national prominence was Lewis Michaux's African National Memorial Bookstore, which operated in Harlem from the early 1930s to the middle of the 1970s. Michaux's store doubled as a meeting place for black activists, including most famously Malcolm X. The Black Power movement embraced black-owned bookstores in the 1960s and 70s as vehicles for promoting their ideology and creating radical political spaces in black communities across the United States. By the 1990s, African-American bookstores earned significant attention from more politically moderate and business oriented media outlets such as the magazine Black Enterprise. In the 2000s and 2010s, however, as independent bookstores of all kinds declined and bookstores chains and Amazon increasingly sold black-authored books, the number of African-American bookstores declined rapidly, dropping from more than 250 to just over 70.

References

  1. Ball, Aimee Lee (2018-03-13). "Shakespeare and Company Is Coming Back to the West Side and the Village". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2019-03-26.
  2. Trachtenberg, Jeffrey A. (2016-04-19). "New Model for Independent Bookstores". Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved 2019-03-26.
  3. "Indie bookstore Shakespeare & Co. is making a comeback". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 2019-03-26.
  4. Skodzinski, Noelle. "COO Tom Allen of On Demand Books on the Espresso Book Machine". Book Business. Retrieved 2019-03-26.
  5. "On Demand Books - Founders".
  6. "Dean & Deluca Launches International Expansion with First Tokyo Store; Cafe Racks Up Extraordinary First Week Sales". www.businesswire.com. 2003-06-11. Retrieved 2019-03-26.
  7. "Dean & Deluca Launches International Expansion with First Tokyo Store; Cafe Racks Up Extraordinary First Week Sales". www.businesswire.com. 2003-06-11. Retrieved 2019-03-26.
  8. Rich, Motoko (2007-06-04). "BookExpo America - Column". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2019-03-26.
  9. "/404". www.publishersweekly.com. Retrieved 2019-03-26.
  10. "Shakespeare & Co. to Open Three Stores This Year". www.publishersweekly.com. Retrieved 2019-03-26.
  11. "Espresso Book Machine". Disruptor Awards. Retrieved 2019-03-26.
  12. "Hunter College Foundation Board of Trustees — Hunter College". www.hunter.cuny.edu. Retrieved 2019-03-26.