Gleebooks: Bookstore interview

For me, Glebe has always been a section of the city where time seems to move differently — streets are filled with university students, and families with kids pepper the park — time moves slowly with none of the frantic pace of Sydney, a few minutes away.

It’s much the same in Gleebooks, where hours can pass without you feeling it at all. There, all you have to do is leave the rat race outside, and just enjoy the magic of the books around you. It’s an icon of the city, and leading independent bookstore that has bucked the trend and continued to open new stores.

David and Andrew were kind enough to answer some questions for me.

Since the store first began, what is the most striking change you’ve gone through – in the store, or in readers that have come and gone, or in the books you carry? 

Gleebooks went some way to achieving its reputation through  its special-order service; sourcing and ordering academic and obscure titles, often from the USA, that weren’t readily available here.  The internet has profoundly changed academic publishing, and the way that academics source the texts that they need. We are still very proud of the academic range that we keep, but it is no longer the cornerstone of the business.

When you first opened your doors, in your first store, what did you want or hope for your store? Is it everything you’d hoped for when you first started? Or were you surprised at how people have fallen in love with the store?

Not surprised as much as overwhelmed by the sheer goodwill that attached to the shop from the outset. We were the lucky ones to be the owners doing it, but plenty of others, passionate about books and good reading, could have. It’s more significant, I think, to imagine the gleebooks was very much the right shop in the right place at the right time.

Looking back, do you have any regrets? An author you wished had come to the store, or a range of books you wished you hadn’t stocked?

No regrets, as such. Running a bookshop, any shop, really, is very time-consuming , so you’d want to be satisfied that the effort was worth it. And that means stocking what you want, and doing things you way you want to, to justify it.

Gleebooks seems to have grown from strength to strength, with more stores opening in different locations – why do you think you’ve succeeded while other stores have not?

Independent bookshops succeed because they are owned and staffed by people passionate  about books and reading; customers can sense that sort of integrity, and as a result have honoured us with their trust and their loyalty. It probably helps that we do it for the love of bookselling rather than the money!

What, do you think, surprises customers when they walk in the door?

Probably the sheer range of titles that we keep in the shop. The big book chains often keep dozens of copies of far fewer titles, for maximum visual impact.  We prefer what retailers call “the long tail’; single copies of thousands more titles than is the norm. Children, young and old,  tend to love our library-style ladders on wheels.

The store is renowned for having international and local guests – which one/s stick out in your mind in the store’s history? 

We were very excited to host a secret event with Salman Rushdie at the height of the fatwah against him; complete with Australian federal police, and bomb sweeps before the event!

Is there anything about the store or the books (genre, authors) you carry that you wish readers would ask more about? 

We have a very good section on Australian Aboriginal studies, and are also heavily involved with fund-raising efforts for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. It would be great  if all Australians were more connected to Aboriginal culture.

Do you think ebooks are threatening bookstores? How have you been affected by them? 

Ebooks are definitely shaking up the industry. We don’t underestimate their impact, but choose to remain sanguine about the role they will play. Unlike the dreaded mp3 and its impact on the CD and record industry, so far it looks like ebooks will remain an alternative to books rather than a replacement.

I didn’t realise you also had a Gleebooks secondhand store – how did that come about? What sort of books do you typically feature there? 

Gleebooks actually started out as a secondhand bookshop in the seventies. It was only a few years after that that we started selling new books, and only in 1990 did the new books move into our current main shop premises at 49 Glebe Point Road.  Both shops, broadly speaking, specialise in the humanities; so that means of heaps of literature, history and the arts.

Where do you see Gleebooks in the next 10 years?

Hopefully that we’re still here!

Gleebooks is also at the Sydney Writers’ Festival this year, so go on and visit if you’re down at the Wharf.