Works Cited and Further Reading
News Reports
The following articles are from local papers, namely The Herald-Times. As I mostly used news sources to track the closing of stores, I have little to say in the way of annotation or comment.
Asher, Gena. "Independent Booksellers-Stores Exploring Variety of Products-Small Touches Can Add Up To Big Success". The Herald-Times, 22 February 1995. https://infoweb-newsbank-com.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&t=pubname%3AHTBIN%21Herald-Times%2B%2528Bloomington%252C%2BIN%2529&sort=YMD_date%3AD&page=1&maxresults=20&f=advanced&val-base-0=Between%20the%20Lines%20Bookstore&fld-base-0=alltext&docref=news/144FF759B028FAC0
Blau, Jon. "Howard's Bookstore Closing After Five Decades". The Herald-Times, 5 February 2013.https://www.heraldtimesonline.com/story/business/2013/02/05/howards-bookstore-closing-after-five-decades/47312103/
Christian, Kurt. "Bloomington Barnes and Noble to Close in February". The Herald-Times, 29 November 2018. https://www.heraldtimesonline.com/story/business/2018/11/29/bloomington-barnes-and-noble-to-close-in-february/46856289/
Hren, Joe. "Borders Officially Closes in Bloomington" Indiana Public Media, 7 January 2011. https://indianapublicmedia.org/news/borders-officially-closes-bloomington.php
Kugler, Carol. “25 Years After the Original Store Closed, Morgenstern Books Reopens its doors to readers”. The Herald-Times, 28 July 2021. https://www.heraldtimesonline.com/story/news/local/2021/07/28/bloomingtons-morgenstern-books-and-cafe-reopens-after-25-year-hiatus/5384058001/
Mills, Kathleen. “Community Losing Resource With Closing of Bookstore” The Herald-Times, 1 October 1995.https://infoweb-newsbank-com.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&t=pubname%3AHTBIN%21Herald-Times%2B%2528Bloomington%252C%2BIN%2529/decade%3A1990%211990%2B-%2B1999&sort=YMD_date%3AD&maxresults=20&f=advanced&val-base-0=bookstore&fld-base-0=Title&bln-base-1=and&val-base-1=Before%3A1999&fld-base-1=YMD_date&docref=news/144FF84C42DC4CC0
Mills, Kathleen. “Morgenstern Struggling to Survive With Influx of Chain Stores”. The Herald Times, 18 February 1996.https://infoweb-newsbank-com.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&t=pubname%3AHTBIN%21Herald-Times%2B%2528Bloomington%252C%2BIN%2529/year%3A1996%211996/mody%3A0218%21February%2B18&f=advanced&action=browse&year=1996&format=text&docref=news/1446E94CB82FD1D0
Werth, Brian. “Big Chain Stores Force Morgenstern Out of Business: Bookstore to Close as Owner Moves to Florida”. The Herald Times, 13 April 1996. https://infoweb-newsbank-com.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&t=pubname%3AHTBIN%21Herald-Times%2B%2528Bloomington%252C%2BIN%2529/year%3A1996%211996/mody%3A0413%21April%2B13&f=advanced&action=browse&year=1996&format=text&docref=news/1446E97A4E1BF040
Werth, Brian. “Independent Bookstores Hanging In-Bookstore Wars Revisited a Year After Megastore Invasion” The Herald-Times, 29 June 1997. https://infoweb-newsbank-com.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&t=pubname%3AHTBIN%21Herald-Times%2B%2528Bloomington%252C%2BIN%2529&sort=YMD_date%3AD&maxresults=20&f=advanced&val-base-0=bookstores&fld-base-0=Title&bln-base-1=and&val-base-1=Before%3A1999&fld-base-1=YMD_date&fld-nav-1=YMD_date&val-nav-1=1980%20-%201999&docref=news/1446ADA70998E4D8"
Annotated Bibliography
"About". Boxcar Books, https://www.boxcarbooks.org/about/
This is a short article detailing Boxcar's history, and it is where I found out about Secret Sailor Books.
"About". Red Emma's Bookstore, https://redemmas.org/about/
Danny Caine's book cites Red Emma's as an example of a successful anarchist bookstore, and I used their own website to make sure my understanding of how the store operated was correct.
Bloomingpedia
This is, as the name suggests, a Bloomington-specific wiki. As with any wiki, it can be freely edited by anyone. The information in here should be taken as hearsay, but I still found it useful for my project. Most of what I had to go off of when researching old bookstores was word of mouth, anyway.
Bors, Matt. “Mister Gotcha”. The Nib, 13 September 2016. https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
I wanted to include this viral comic in my blog post about anticapitalist bookstores. It acts as a good reminder to me when I think about calling people hypocrites for participating in the systems they rally against (especially when they have no choice but to participate in those systems).
Caine, Danny. How to Protect Bookstores and Why: The Present and Future of Bookselling. Microcosm Publishing, 2023
Danny Caine, another author who works in a bookstore, organized his book as a series of tours of different independent bookstores, most located in the Midwest, with accompanying sections providing suggestions that readers can take to aid the bookstores around them. The twelve bookstores he travels to help create a more complete picture of what independent bookstores can look like today, and his style helped influence the piece I ultimately planned on writing about Morgenstern’s.
Cook, Josh. The Art of Libromancy: On Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-First Century. Biblioasis, 2023.
Author Josh Cook uses his experience working at Porter Square Books, an independent bookstore, to write a series of essays about various aspects of his work. Of particular note is his belief that booksellers should practice a kind of ‘affirmative action’, giving special attention to books written by members of marginalized communities to help increase their sales. He talks about this in a number of his essays, including “Bookselling in the Real World”, “On a Moving Train-The Possibility of Progressive Bookselling”, “Two Paths for the Independent Bookstore”, and “The Least We Can Do: White Supremacy, Free Speech, and Independent Bookstores”.
Harris, Elizabeth A. "How TikTok Became a Best-Seller Machine". New York Times, 1 July 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/books/tiktok-books-booktok.html
Hellebore. "Closing Statement". Boxcar Books, 2 December 2017. https://www.boxcarbooks.org/closing-statement/
This is a short essay detailing some of the reasons why Boxcar Books ultimately closed, as well as a statement against Bloomington's increasing development and skyrocketing rent prices. The frusturation the author has with the City is palpable and tragic.
Kinder, Kimberly. The Radical Bookstore: Counterspace for Social Movements. University of Minnesota Press, 16 March 2021.
One of the other books I read for this project cited The Radical Bookstore, and upon tracking it down for myself I was very pleased to find that it mentioned Boxcar books a handful of times. The author's research allowed me to finally provide a concrete reason for Boxcar Books' closing rather than needing to rely on hearsay.
Kirch, Claire. "Mission-Driven Indie Bookstores Drop J.K. Rowling's Books". Publisher's Weekly, 3 July 2020.https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/83771-mission-driven-indies-drop-j-k-rowling-s-books.html
This is a news article reporting on a few examples of indie bookstores taking action against J.K. Rowling's transphobia by refusing to stock her titles in their stores. Rowling is probably the best-known extremely controversial yet popular living author, so I used discussions around selling her books as an example of tough decisions booksellers sometimes need to make.
Milliot, Jim. "Publishing Leaders Issuing Warning Over Amazon's Market Power". Publisher's Weekly, 18 August 2020. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/84119-publishing-leaders-issuing-warning-over-amazon-s-market-power.html#:~:text=Prohibit%20Amazon%20from%20Using%20Loss,share%2C%E2%80%9D%20the%20letter%20states.
Further Reading
In the early stages of this project, I had thought of writing about the history of American Bookstores, particularly in the 20th century. I started my search at the Lilly Library with a few books about bookstores. Additionally, I'm going to leave a few more books about books and the publishing industry here for further reading.
Carrion, Jorge. Bookshops. Editions Anagrama, 2013. Translation 2017.
Graham, Gordon and Abel, Richard. The Book in the United States Today. Transaction Publishers, 1997.
When I was thinking of writing about the American book industry, I purposefully checked this out to get a slightly dated view of what the publishing industry looked like, pre-mass adoption of the internet and pre-ebook.
Lehmann-Haupt, Hellmut. The Book in America; a History of the Making and Selling of Books in the United States. Bowker, 2nd Edition 1951.
Of particular note in this book was the new writing on the 20th century that was added in the second edition. The author complained about the trends he was noticing in the graphic design of book jackets at the time, noticing trends that would (unfortunately for him) persist well into the future.
Miller, Laura J. Reluctant Capitalists. The University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Rabinowitz, Paula. American Pulp: How Paperbacks Brought Modernism to Main Street. Princeton University Press, 2014.
This is a history of the American Pulp paperback book. From what I've read, it's very interesting.