in recent weeks, important bookstores have opened in Bogota, Barcelona and other cities around the world. After the pandemic, the spaces of the book par excellence enjoy maximum validity. It was the subject of this year’s international conference of booksellers and publishers, in the Arab Emirates.
The new bookstore in Bogotá is called Ficciones, it occupies a stately house and is defined as a “book bar”, because at the back it has a bar and several tables where you can have a coffee or lunch surrounded by literature. However, the defining feature is perhaps the sharranca that decorates the floor of the children’s section: between play and ritual, every bookshop invites you on a journey between two worlds, that of printed letters and that of ideas, and the of objects and that of imagination and criticism. This is why bookstores have become crucial in our time: because they are the ideal interfaces between physical and virtual reality.
Together with several partners, he has promoted the Consuelo Gaitán project, which led the National Library of Colombia. At the opening party, which gathered both readers from the area and cultural figures – from the bookseller María Osorio to the writer Piedad Bonnett – he told me that “after having worked in the public sphere and mobilizing the reading index through public libraries, we set out to open a literary bookstore with the conviction that the language of fiction illuminates and enriches reality.” The aim is to prescribe and trade, but also to promote the culture of democracy and peace. Gaitán adds: “We want to support the Sierra Nevada Indigenous Memory Library project, which collects the knowledge and culture of the original peoples.” The curation of good books unites bookstores with libraries, also the will to defend the power of data and facts in today’s post-truth context.
Ficciones is very close to Prólogo and Wilborada 1047, two Bogota institutions, and in the neighboring neighborhood of Teusaquillo, which has become the capital’s bookshop district par excellence since the pandemic. Among its bookshops, the classic Casa Tomada and the new Garabato and Matorral stands out, whose iconic architecture is virally recommended by Instagram profiles, but there are more. many more Of all sizes, generalists and specialists, with a commercial spirit and an activist and social soul. It is one of the bookstore booms that has also taken place in other Latin American capitals, such as Buenos Aires. Apparently, they can’t imagine without bookstores.
An international phenomenon. The inaugurations cover the entire American continent, from south to north. Librería Atlántica has created a new branch in Santiago de Chile that also stands out for its design (and virality). At the end of last year the Californian bookstore The Ripped Bodice opened a twin branch in Brooklyn, New York. It is difficult to find a metropolis that has not recently opened a magnetic establishment devoted to books. Backstory Bookshop opened in Barcelona’s Eixample district in February, with a wide range of books in English and a children’s space that is literally a dream: it invites boys and girls to linger and read. And in March it opened in the neighborhood of Gràcia Sonora, also focused, but on titles about music and audio.
2023 was already an important year for bookstores worldwide. Just three examples. Babylone opened its doors in Paris, in an impressive brutalist space, under the structure of the Saint Laurent brand. In New Delhi, the prestigious independent bookstore The Bookshop Inc opened a new, also spectacular, headquarters in a shopping center. And in Florence, Odeon Giunti, which merges the bookstore with a cinema with a hundred years of history, became the new tourist attraction for literary lovers from all over the world. As they say on the final page of the publication that explains its history, the metamorphosis has wanted to “make the Odeon a place of culture that projects towards the 21st century: open every day from morning to night, and where to go for meet, choose a book, watch a film or compare opinions”.
All these trends were analyzed on 27 and 28 April at the Sharjah Booksellers Conference, which took place
in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the Arab emirate that has dedicated itself entirely to the world of books (it is the first tax-free free zone in the publishing world). Among the speakers, there was the Italian Andrea Giunti, who leads the largest bookstore chain in his country, now a new partner of the old Odeon cinema; or Émile Tyan, from another chain, Antoine, which has twelve locations in Lebanon; together with other colleagues from the five continents.
One was the Mexican expert in the book chain Fernando Pascual, responsible in Latin America for the publishing services company Lantia, which publishes the magazine Publishers Weekly in Spanish. His perception was that “new spirits are perceived to believe that it is worth fighting to have a physical space to share the voice of a catalog” and that we are facing “a growth in the consumption of paper books through points of specialized sales”. The pandemic reminded us of the importance of contact and meeting, that life must be as much digital as physical, paper, skin. That is why Amazon and online sales have consolidated, but have not overshadowed traditional commerce.
Reading Rhythms defines itself as “a reading party” and not a book club. In exclusive New York bars, terraces or parks dozens of young people buy a ticket for 20 dollars (€18) to read accompanied, but in silence, while good music plays. If you don’t register, you don’t know the address of the meeting. It’s about belonging to a community of booklovers with whom you know you’ll feel comfortable, safe, like-minded, turning a lifestyle into a password and commodity.
Chinese digital publication Jing Daily said it on March 12 in a headline: “Bookstores are the latest brand obsession in China.” Thanks to them, they can connect with young consumers who prioritize cultural experiences, gender issues and a less accelerated life. In the same month, Australian cosmetics brand Aesop gave Shanghai 23,000 books written by female authors at an event. At the headquarters of the feminist bookstore Paper Moon and that of the Japanese chain Tsutaya, now also on the mainland, perfume brands also designed windows or temporary stores.
But bookstores aren’t just sexy, they’re also hypercritical. In Putin’s Russia, independent women sell books on the history of Ukraine and the USSR, on pacifism and on LGBTI culture. And, as Li Yuan explained to The New York Times, Chinese migrants create a network of social gatherings and debates in the bookstores of the cities where they live. He quotes bookseller Annie Jieping Zhang, who after working in Hong Kong for two decades moved to Taipei in 2022 and opened a bookstore that already has a branch in Chiang Mai, Thailand: “I want it to be the place where Chinese people from all the world can exchange ideas”. At the same time it has promoted Matters Lab, a decentralized social network. The name of the bookstore is perfect: Nowhere. Indeed: it is everywhere and nowhere.
