Location | Cambridge, Massachusetts |
---|---|
Coordinates | 42°22′21″N71°06′59″W / 42.3725°N 71.1164°W |
Opening date | 1932 |
Owner | Jeffrey Mayersohn and Linda Seamonson |
Website | Harvard Book Store website |
Harvard Book Store is an independent and locally owned seller of used, new, and bargain books in Cambridge's Harvard Square.
Harvard Book Store was established in 1932 by Mark Kramer, father of longtime owner Frank Kramer, and originally sold used textbooks to students. [1] [2]
Family-owned for over seventy-five years, the store was sold in the fall of 2008 to Jeffrey Mayersohn and Linda Seamonson of Wellesley, Massachusetts, and remains an independent business. [3] [4]
Though often confused with the Harvard Coop,[ citation needed ] the store has no affiliation with Harvard University or the Harvard Coop bookstore, which is managed by Barnes & Noble. With a focus on an academic and intellectual audience, the store's selection and customer service is repeatedly honored by local publications and surveys.[ citation needed ]
Forbes named the book store as its top bookshop in its "World's Top Shops 2005" list. [5]
In 2009, the store introduced an on-demand book printing service called the Espresso Book Machine, produced by New York firm On Demand Books, using books in the public domain available through Google Library. [6]
In recent years, a well-attended author event series has hosted Al Gore, Salman Rushdie, Haruki Murakami, John Updike, Orhan Pamuk, and Stephen King, in addition to a number of local writers and academics. [7]
The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. The New York Times Book Review has published the list weekly since October 12, 1931. In the 21st century, it has evolved into multiple lists, grouped by genre and format, including fiction and nonfiction, hardcover, paperback and electronic.
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.
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.
Walden Book Company, Inc., doing business as, Waldenbooks, was an American shopping mall-based bookstore chain and 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.
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.
An independent bookstore is a retail bookstore which is independently owned. Usually, independent stores consist of only a single actual store. They may be structured as sole proprietorships, closely held corporations or partnerships, cooperatives, or nonprofits. Independent stores can be contrasted with chain bookstores, which have many locations and are owned by corporations which often have divisions in other lines besides bookselling. Specialty stores such as comic book shops tend to be independent.
Glad Day Bookshop is an independent bookstore and restaurant located in Toronto, Ontario, specializing in LGBT literature. Previously located above a storefront at 598A Yonge Street for much of its history, the store moved to its current location at 499 Church Street, in the heart of the city's Church and Wellesley neighbourhood, in 2016. The store's name and logo are based on a painting by William Blake.
Bookselling is the commercial trading of books which is the retail and distribution end of the publishing process.
Brentano's was an American bookstore chain with numerous locations in the United States.
The Globe Corner Bookstore was one of the largest travel book and map retailers in North America. It was located at 90 Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Harvard Square. The store provided a full range of travel and outdoor recreation reference materials for a destination: guidebooks, maps, atlases, recreation guides, travel literature, nature guides, photography books, cookbooks, and language products.
The Harvard/MIT Cooperative Society is a retail cooperative for the Harvard University and MIT campuses in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While the general public is able to shop, membership discounts and other benefits are restricted to Coop members. As of 2020, there are three store locations at Harvard, and two at MIT. The main store is located in the heart of Harvard Square, across the street from the Harvard subway station headhouse.
Curious George is a children's book written and illustrated by Margret Rey and H. A. Rey, and published by Houghton Mifflin in 1941. The first book in the Curious George series, it tells the story of an orphaned monkey named George and his adventures with the Man with the Yellow Hat. For 83 years, it has sold over 25 million copies, and has been translated into various different languages such as Japanese, French, Afrikaans, Portuguese, Swedish, German, Chinese, Danish, and Norwegian. It is also in the Indie Choice Book Awards Picture Book Hall of Fame and has been the subject of scholarly criticism.
Book store shoplifting is a problem for book sellers and has sometimes led stores to keep certain volumes behind store counters.
Firestorm Books is a worker-owned and self-managed "anti-capitalist business" in Asheville, North Carolina. Named after the firestorm, this infoshop operates with an eye on creating a sustainable, radical community event space. Firestorm features regular events, such as film screenings, political and economic teach-ins, local and traveling musicians and community workshops.
Thalia is a chain of more than 200 book shops in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Russell Books is an independent bookstore in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. A family-owned business still owned and operated by the children and grandchildren of its founder, it has been labelled as the largest used bookstore in Canada.
The Million Year Picnic, is a comic book store located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1974, the Picnic is the oldest comic book store in New England, and one of the longest standing comic specialty stores in the United States.