Borders Group, Inc. was an American multinational book and music retailer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. In its final year, the company employed about 19,500 people throughout the U.S., primarily in its Borders and Waldenbooks stores.
The Strand Bookstore is an independent bookstore located at 828 Broadway, at the corner of East 12th Street in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, two blocks south of Union Square. In addition to the main location, there is another store on the Upper West Side on Columbus Ave between West 81st and 82nd Streets, as well as kiosks in Central Park and Times Square, and a curated shelf at Moynihan Train Hall. The company's slogan is "18 Miles Of Books," as featured on its stickers, T-shirts, and other merchandise. In 2016, The New York Times called The Strand "the undisputed king of the city’s independent bookstores."
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.
Lambda Rising was an LGBT bookstore that operated from 1974 to 2010 in Washington, D.C.
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.
AbeBooks is an e-commerce global online marketplace with seven websites that offer books, fine art, and collectables from sellers in over 50 countries. Launched in 1996, it specialises in used, rare and out-of-print books. AbeBooks has been a subsidiary of Amazon since 2008.
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.
Brentano's was an American bookstore chain with numerous locations in the United States.
James Lackington was a bookseller who is credited with revolutionizing the British book trade. He is best known for refusing credit at his London bookshop which allowed him to reduce the price of books throughout his store. He built the largest bookstore in the United Kingdom, with an inventory of over 500,000 volumes.
Renaissance Books is a large independent bookstore originally located in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin, specializing in used books. Founded in the 1950s by George John and Erwin Just, it is now owned by Robert John, George's younger brother. The store's former main building was five stories high housing somewhere from 350,000 to 600,000 volumes. The New York Times described it as "like a book collector’s attic, with boxes of used books lining the floor of this century-old former furniture store. But it’s more organized than it looks, with about a half-million books parceled among dozens of categories ". The local Milwaukee Journal Sentinel described it as, "bursting at the seams with used books... easy to get lost among the mazelike shelves."
Balducci's Food Lover's Market is a specialty gourmet food retailer in the Mid-Atlantic United States with eight grocery stores, owned by Albertsons since 2020.
Kroch's and Brentano's was the largest bookstore in Chicago, and at one time it was the largest privately owned bookstore chain in the United States. The store and the chain were formed in 1954 through the merger of the separate Kroch's bookstore with the former Chicago branch of the New York-based Brentano's bookstore. The chain was closed in 1995 after suffering financial losses from increased competition.
Book Soup is an independent bookstore located at 8818 Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, California, and is the largest general interest independent bookstore in Hollywood. The store is "known for its tall, teetering stacks and mazes of shelves crammed with titles that attracted entertainment and tourist industry clientele..." Popular with many in the entertainment industry, the store continues to hosts events featuring a variety of celebrity authors who have so far included Muhammad Ali, Howard Stern, Annie Leibovitz, Chuck Palahniuk, Jenna Jameson, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer, and The Doors. Considered a "cultural fixture" of the Sunset Strip, Book Soup has also been featured as a location in a number of films and television shows.
The Charles Scribner's Sons Building, also known as 597 Fifth Avenue, is a commercial structure in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, on Fifth Avenue between 48th and 49th Streets. Designed by Ernest Flagg in a Beaux Arts style, it was built from 1912 to 1913 for the Scribner's Bookstore.
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.
A Different Light was a chain of four LGBT bookstores in the United States, active from 1979 to 2011.
St. Mark's Bookshop was an independent book store, established in 1977 in New York City's East Village neighborhood. It was the oldest independent bookstore in Manhattan owned by its original owners. The shop, run by proprietors Bob Contant and Terry McCoy, specialized in cultural and critical theory, graphic design, poetry, small presses, and film studies—what the New York Times called "neighborhood-appropriate literature". It featured a curated selection of fiction, periodicals and journals, including foreign titles, and included unusual-for-bookstores sections on belles-lettres, anarchists, art criticism, women's studies, music, drama, and drugs.
Left Bank Books is an independent bookstore located at 399 N. Euclid Street in the Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri. It is the oldest independently operated bookstore in St. Louis. It was founded by students in 1969 as a leftist collective to sell underground, counter-cultural, feminist, and anti-establishment books, newspapers, and magazines—the first to do so in the St. Louis region. It was the first bookstore with its name in the United States, and the first exhibiting gallery for children's book illustrator Mary Engelbreit. Left Bank Books sponsors reading groups, book signings, author appearances, and community literary activities. In 2015 the Washington Post named it one of the best bookstores in the United States and in 2017 Real Simple magazine has called Left Bank Books the best bookstore in the state of Missouri.
Books of Wonder is an independent bookstore and publisher based in Manhattan. It was established in 1980 by Peter Glassman and James Carey and is focused on selling antique, classic and new children's books. It has been called "New York City's oldest children's-only bookstore" still in activity.
Moon Palace Books is an independent bookstore in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded in 2012 by Angela and Jamie Schwesnedl, it sells rare and used books and, after having moving twice since its establishment, is currently located on Minnehaha Avenue near Lake Street.
