An integral part of New York University's Summer Publishing Institute is visiting independent bookstores in New York City. This year, four students wrote about their impressions of bookstores they visited, which they kindly have shared with Shelf Awareness. Yesterday we published Mallory Stock's report on The Ripped Bodice. Today we have Alison Keiser's report on Greenlight Bookstore. In succeeding issues, we'll run reports about two other city bookstores.
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| Students from the 2025 NYU Summer Publishing Institute outside Greenlight Bookstore. (photos: Alison Keiser) | |
Named after a well-known phrase from The Great Gatsby, Brooklyn's Greenlight Bookstore greets visitors with a colorful range of new fiction and bestsellers. Wrapping around the walls are the fiction shelves, where almost all genres cohabitate (a choice meant to encourage cross-genre reading). The one exception is romance titles, which, due to the genre's boom, have a newly implemented cozy corner in the back of the store. In the center, a long, cylindrical shelf is home to nonfiction and new hardcovers. Even with the stacks of books balanced on the front tables and shelved to the ceiling, Greenlight Books is open, light, and inviting.
One of the store's book buyers, Maritza Montañez, took us through the process of purchasing a book. As an example, she used the memoir Sad Tiger by Neige Sinno, an innovative and emotionally raw book that, because of the structural chances it takes, is not easily categorizable. Maritza discussed the questions book buyers consider before a purchase--Does this fit with the inventory we already sell? How many could we hypothetically sell? What are some comparative titles to consider? Will we be able to display it or is it going right to the shelf?--and how, with Sad Tiger, they didn't know the answers to a lot of these questions. After attending an event put on by her sales representative and hearing the author speak about her story, the buyers at Greenlight felt convinced that this was a book they wanted in their stores, even if its audience wasn't immediately apparent. The team had to make some decisions to ensure it would sell, such as having the book displayed in the front of the store so it wouldn't get lost among other titles.
When asked what was new in the store, Maritza mentioned Ocean Vuong's sophomore novel, The Emperor of Gladness; a Greenlight First Editions Book Club pick, Flashlight by Susan Choi; Melissa Febos's The Dry Season; and Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin. When I asked what was selling well, Maritza said that literary fiction always leads sales at Greenlght, for example, All Fours by Miranda July, recently released in paperback. BookTok also can spur sales, such as Butter by Asako Yuzuki, which quickly sold 40 copies in the store.
Much like literary fiction publishers, Greenlight buys books with high salability to cover costs so that they can take risks on lesser-known titles they are excited about. For book lovers, it can be hard to balance the business with a passion for great literature.
In an uplifting close to our conversation, Maritza said that being a bookseller is gradually becoming a more stable career. In recent years, a number of major independent bookstores have begun to unionize, paving the way for smaller stores like Greenlight to do the same. Maritza said, "Greenlight believes strongly in sustainability and equitability, so it only made sense we would move in that direction." A person's career in books often is a vocation stemming from a deep love and passion for the important work of bringing literature to others. But, as Maritza and I discussed, even if people don't go into book careers for the money, one shouldn't have to compromise by working multiple jobs to make ends meet or leave the path entirely to survive. Greenlight's baseline livable wages, with options to grow into a long career at the store, show a positive trend in the industry, one acknowledging that taking care of your workers is taking care of the book industry at large.
After shopping their wide selection of books and purchasing some exciting new titles, I stepped out to the corner of Fulton and Portland, and despite the heat hanging over New York that afternoon, I felt a renewed energy for this important work and a newfound love and hope for independent bookstores and the power of books.
Alison Keiser is a managing editor for Veliz Books and an editor for Dulcet magazine. She's a Midwest native currently residing in Portland, Ore. In her free time, she can be found bingeing multi-hour analysis videos on old TV shows.