How Politics & Prose, a clueful indie bookstore, survives Amazon.com and other threats

Even Borders & Noble faces its share of financial challenges these days. But across the Potomac River from me in Washington, D.C., an independent bookstore called Politics and Prose remains a thriving local institution, as you can see from this photo of a crowd gathered for Rabbi Arthur Blecher‘s talk on his book The New American Judaism.

Click and pick up

“We kept one step ahead of the competition,” Carla Cohen, a cofounder, told a Wall Street Journal blogger. “We opened a coffeehouse before Starbucks was on the scene. The model for us was Kramerbooks. We’re a much better venue for  authors so we’ve never competed with Barnes & Noble on that. We can always do a better job keeping in touch with our customers and keeping publicity out about the events, so we’ve never had to compete. I think our biggest competition is with Amazon.com. Amazon makes it easy when people are sitting at their desks—which most of us are during the day—and you read something and go online and order it. You have to be an old-fashioned book-lover to say ‘I’ll wait until the weekend.’ We do get a fair amount of Internet ordering on our Web site with people who are going to pick it up later” (links added). From blogs to Flickr-posted book signings, this store understand the Net—something that any savvy store could do, even without VIPs such as Al Gore showing up to promote their books (photo).

Close to home: Eons ago P&P gave a book party for my first book, The Silicon Jungle (Ballantine), and I can vouch for the store as a good venue for writers.

Top image: CC-licensed photo from Runneralan2004. Gore photo by P&P customer Bruce Guthrie (used with the store’s permission).

(WSJ item via former Bowker president Michael Cairnes’ blog, PersonaNonData.)