Paperback Dreams: A PBS Documentary for People Who Love Books

Husband-wife team Bridget Warren and Todd Stewart own an independent bookstore, Vertigo Books. Times are tough for independent booksellers, so after trying a “please buy from us” campaign in order to stay afloat, they decided, in tandem with filmmaker Alex Beckstead, to screen Beckstead’s new PBS documentary, Paperback Dreams, at their own bookstore. (To see the rest of this post, click “Read More” below.)



Bridget and Todd are but a few people trying to keep independent stores open, stores that were once small, friendly environments where one could find books, not only from major publishers, but offerings from small and independent presses with quirky fiction or controversial titles. These smaller stores were laboratories for the unconventional, evolving from both counterculture stores in the sixties as well as mom and pop operations, where readers could find what they wanted at the corner rather than the mall.

Paperback Dreams is a one-hour documentary that will air on PBS after it finishes the screening process. It’s the story of two famous “indie” booksellers who have struggled to survive: Andy Ross, owner of Cody’s Books, and Clark Kepler, owner of Kepler’s Books. Both men have fought vandalism and harassment because they chose, over the years, to carry books on pacifism and counterculture, or titles such as Salmen Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. Cody’s was firebombed in 1989.

The documentary shows how indies had decent sales as late as 1993, before Barnes and Noble spread their mega-chain across the country—and before the biggest "indie impediments" of all took root in mainstream American culture, Amazon.com and the Internet, impacting the publishing industry forever. Check local listings, as the cliché goes, to find out when this great doc about people who love books will be shown in your area. Also, find out much more about the documentary at the film's really cool promotional site, Paperback Dreams.

We already know that major publishing houses are limiting the number of titles published, but with each passing year, conglomerates are now determining who can sell books, and where. Did I just hear the name “Orwell”—again?