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.
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."
W & G Foyle Ltd. is a bookseller with a chain of seven stores in England. It is best known for its flagship store in Charing Cross Road, London. Foyles was once listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's largest bookshop in terms of shelf length, at 30 miles (48 km), and of number of titles on display. It was bought by Waterstones in 2018.
Tattered Cover is a bookstore chain in Denver, Colorado. It is one of the largest independent bookstores in the United States. Tattered Cover is open seven days a week at all branches, hosts prominent book signings, and is known for its customer service. Together, the stores maintain an inventory of over half a million books. Its LoDo store houses an events space that can seat over 250 persons, while its East Colfax store can seat around 100.
McNally Robinson Booksellers is a family-operated chain of Canadian independent bookstores founded in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1981. It is managed by new owners Chris Hall and Lori Baker, formerly managed by Holly and Paul McNally. As of 2019 it had three branches, two in Winnipeg and one in Saskatoon, as well as a sister-store McNally Jackson in New York City.
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.
Brentano's was an American bookstore chain with numerous locations in the United States.
B. Dalton Bookseller was an American retail bookstore chain founded in 1966 by Bruce Dayton, a member of the same family that operated the Dayton's department store chain. B. Dalton expanded to become the largest retailer of hardcover books in the United States, with 779 stores at the peak of the chain's success. Located mainly at indoor shopping malls, B. Dalton competed primarily with Waldenbooks. Barnes & Noble acquired the chain from Dayton's in 1987 and continued to operate it until a late 2009 announcement that the last 50 stores would be liquidated by January 2010. B. Dalton was later revived by rebranding a Barnes & Noble location in 2022.
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.
Evelyn de Mille was a Canadian known for being the first woman in Calgary, Alberta to own her own stand-alone bookstore. She opened her first bookstore in 1956. In 1974 she became the first woman in Canada to found a bookstore chain.
John Dunning was an American writer of non-fiction and detective fiction. He was known for his reference books on old-time radio and his series of mysteries featuring Denver bookseller and ex-policeman Cliff Janeway.
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.
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.
Cody's Books (1956–2008) was an independent bookstore based in Berkeley, California. It "was a pioneer in bookselling, bringing the paperback revolution to Berkeley, fighting censorship, and providing a safe harbor from tear gas directed at anti-Vietnam War protesters throughout the 1960s and 1970s."
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.
Community Bookstore was a bookstore in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. It opened in 1974 in Brooklyn Heights and moved to Cobble Hill after its rent spiked in 1985. Owner John Scioli operated it until retiring and closing the store in 2016. It was known as an atypical crowded bookstore filled to capacity with stacks of books accumulated via community donations.
Dane Joseph Neller is an American businessman and entrepreneur. He is best known as former chief executive of Dean & DeLuca, On Demand Books, and Shakespeare & Co.
