A Bookstore That Only Sells One Book

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April 29, 2011 by Dane Carlson | 2 Comments

At a small bookstore in New York City, if you’ve seen one book, you’ve seen them all, because the shop only sells one book, Martian Summer: Robot Arms, Cowboy Spacemen, and My 90 Days With the Phoenix Mars Mission. The author rented the small retail space to promote his book for a few weeks. The NY Times has more:

The book is Mr. Kessler’s account of NASA’s 2008 Phoenix Mars Lander mission, reported during 90 days inside mission control, in Tucson, alongside 130 leading scientists and engineers. Publishers Weekly calls the book a “slightly offbeat firsthand account of scientific determination and stubborn intellect” that “delivers a fascinating journey of discovery peppered with humor.”

The store is part marketing ploy, to be sure (Mr. Kessler is a creative director at an advertising agency), but also part meditation on the meaning of the book in an age of e-readers and a bankrupt Borders.

“This makes books feel like an art installation,” he said. “We should care about them.”

Mr. Kessler said he was inspired by restaurants like the Meatball Shop on the Lower East Side. “I was thinking about people that just sell one thing really well,” he said. Religions, he reasoned, ply a single book. Why can’t a bookstore? He calls himself the Monobookist.