Business Opportunities Weblog

A Bookstore That Only Sells One Book

By on April 28, 2013 in Books

Photo by [F]oxymoron

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.

Photo by [F]oxymoron.

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Business Opportunities Weblog editor and publisher Dane Carlson lives in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, just 15 miles from Yosemite National Park. He accidentally became a professional blogger in 2001. He has added 12,203 posts to the site.

Another Idea: How to Start a Book Business

  • http://helipad.me Joe W.

    This is true for any business I suppose. Do one thing, and do it very well.

    Nice use of a pop-up store though.

    My question: is there a company which specialises in purchasing/transforming stores specifically for the purpose of turning them into pop-up stores for a month?

  • http://wahm.business-opportunities.biz Angela Shupe

    I have to admit, that is a good marketing ploy. After all, he did find his way into the news because of it. I doubt we’ll see many one book stores opening up, but it is this type of ad campaign that I love hearing about. There always seems to be some new idea popping up all the time.

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