Blending Tradition with Technology: Chris Steib's Journey from Literature to Indie Bookshop in Tarrytown

In this episode, I chat with Chris Steib, owner of Transom Bookshop in Tarrytown, New York. Chris takes us on his career journey from a literature student to a high school English teacher, transitioning into the corporate world as a speechwriter and tech entrepreneur, and finally realizing his dream of opening an indie bookshop. Chris shares how he leveraged technology to create unique experiences for book lovers, including a literary magazine and an iPhone app for writers, and the challenges and rewards of integrating modern digital tools into a traditional bookstore setting.

Small, niche bookstores come with their own set of hurdles and triumphs, and Chris is here to shed light on them. Learn the art of hand-picking inventory, fostering relationships with local authors, and the innovative concept of "reverse bookselling." Discover how Chris navigates space and event planning constraints through creative solutions like the guest bookseller initiative. Chris and I delve into the economic aspects of book pricing and understand why buying a full-price book from an indie shop is more than just a purchase—it’s a community investment. 

Chris’s story is also a tale of community values and historical charm. With a focus on curiosity, gratitude, creativity, and kindness, Chris has turned Transom Bookshop into a local treasure. Listen as he highlights the rich history and vibrant community of Tarrytown, New York, from its walkable Main Street to the scenic Aqueduct Hiking Trail. Whether you're a local or planning a visit, this episode offers a heartfelt invitation to experience the unique allure of Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow.

Transom Bookshop

 Users, Colin Winnette

 Mom Rage: The Everyday Crisis of Modern Motherhood, Minna Dubin

 Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It, Richard V. Reeves

 Patriarchy Blues: Reflections on Manhood, Frederick Joseph

 I Don’t Want to Talk about It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression, Terrence Real

 Quickly, While They Still Have Horses: Stories, Jan Carson

 Total Garbage: How We Can Fix Our Waste and Heal Our World, Edward Humes

 Blue Skies, T.C.Boyle

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson-Beverly and I'm a bibliophile. Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast. We believe in exceptional writing, stories that educate, ruminate, elevate and celebrate A hub where book lovers discover their next favorite read and connect with a vibrant literary community. Each week, I present interviews with authors, independent bookshop owners and booksellers from around the globe and publishing professionals. When I started this podcast in 2020, my intention was to support indie bookshops and authors and to produce a quality podcast where listeners gain insight to authors' lives and their writing style and chat with booksellers about what they're reading. I chose a format that is enjoyable for me, my guests and my listeners a show without interruptions from advertisers, cutting into conversations. A show without interruptions from advertisers, cutting into conversations With the millions of podcasts out there. Thank you for choosing to listen to the Bookshop Podcast. You clicked on today's episode. I'm here. You're here, my guest is here. All thanks to my team and emails back and forth, researching guests, creating meaningful questions, recording interviews, audio edits, final edits, producing the show and uploading each episode so it magically appears on podcast platforms globally. It took days of work and a team of professionals to bring you this episode. I support creativity that is not marred by conformity, and I'm asking you to do the same To financially support this show. Please go to thebookshoppodcastcom. Click on Support the Show and you can donate through. Buy Me a Coffee To help the show reach more people. Please share episodes with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. Okay, let's get on with the show. You're listening to episode 255.

Speaker 1: 2:13

Located at the heart of Main Street in Tarrytown, transom Bookshop is a stone's throw from Sleepy Hollow and a short drive to New York's beloved river towns of Irvington, dobbs Ferry, ossining and Hastings-on-Hudson. Transom Bookshop was designed and created by owner Chris Stipe and carries bestsellers to collectible classics, must-read mainstays and undiscovered gems, plus stationery, pens, totes, gifts, puzzles and kids' books. Chris sent me a gift package that included a copy of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving pencils, a transom bookshop tote, bookmarks which I never have enough of and a collection of awesome postcards, one with the image of a headless horseman carrying a stack of books and the words read your head off Sleepy Hollow, new York. It was a fun gift package. Thanks, chris. If you'd like to see the amount of work that goes into the making of an indie bookshop. I highly recommend checking out the how we Made it section at trainsomebookshopcom. Hi, chris, and welcome to the show. It's great to have you here.

Speaker 2: 3:20

Thank you, mandy. It's great to be here. It's funny to meet somebody for the first time who I feel like I'm old friends with. I've heard your voice quite a bit, so it's great to see you.

Speaker 1: 3:28

Likewise, and I love that painting behind you.

Speaker 2: 3:31

Oh, thank you, that is actually an Oliver Jeffers.

Speaker 1: 3:34

Wow, lucky you. I'd love to have him on the show and you've also got a ukulele there. My husband is a ukulele luthier.

Speaker 2: 3:41

That's amazing. I would love to find out more about that. This one I bought in Hawaii, in Maui, about 15 years ago. Yeah, the Oliver Jeffers my wife and I bought maybe 2015 or 20 years ago. 15 years ago we bought it on a lark and it was before Oliver Jeffers was Oliver Jeffers and he like a few years ago. I looked up and I looked at the signature and I was like wait a minute, I know that.

Speaker 1: 4:00

That was a good purchase, chris. Let's learn about you, your work as a startup consultant, product mentor and leader, web designer and how this led you to open a brick and mortar bookshop.

Speaker 2: 4:17

You know, despite how tech heavy my resume looks over the past 15 or so years, it's mostly a liberal arts background. I studied literature in college. I taught high school English for a few years. When I moved back east I was in corporate communications for GE and NBC and I was a speechwriter there for a few years. During that time I started a literary magazine with some friends and because we had no capital, we built a website out of just hand-coded HTML and I thought, well, this is fun, this is a thing I could do for a living because I really like this.

Speaker 2: 4:44

And this was the early 2000s, so the bar for getting into tech in Manhattan was actually pretty low and I became just kind of the tech guy because I was a 24-year-old who knew how to put HTML together and so that parlayed into a job in media for a few years. And again, because it was all still very nascent, you know, I was very lucky to be able to get into startups and that's sort of the rest of that path. I mean, during that time I always wanted to stay close to writers and writing and publishing. I had that literary magazine that was fun for a few years. I belong to a meetup community of folks who were tech people who worked in publishing. I built an iPhone app for writers just for fun on the side that's also called Transom, and I got a great group of friends in publishing and of course, I always frequented my local indies.

Speaker 2: 5:35

But I mean there are definitely advantages that I have benefited from being in that tech world. I mean one the suite of digital tools that are available to bookstores. There's just so many of them and they vary in usability and, to put it delicately, they vary in their modernity. But I've been in tech for so long that I've had no trouble finding and adopting the right tech tools and they all just seem to make sense to me and fit. A lot of stores opening up struggled with what POS to use and they needed something that was either very user-friendly or was very tailored, and the one that I use is based in Dawson.

Speaker 2: 6:12

I love it. So that was an advantage of just being sort of I would say tech savvy is a productive way to put it, but that certainly helped. I mean, obviously I built my own website. That was easy and it's a great website, thank you, thank you. I hate Squarespace all day, every day, and I know a lot of shops, a lot of small businesses struggle with that how to build it, what to build it in, what to put it on. I was really lucky. I've been doing it for so long. I did it over a cup of coffee in the morning and moved on to the next thing on the infinite list.

Speaker 1: 6:41

And for online book sales you use bookshoporg.

Speaker 2: 6:45

Yeah, because I'm too low volume to manage my own shipping. It just doesn't make sense. A bookshop is a godsend. I mean it's amazing what they do I don't touch a book, I don't touch the order and I get a generous percentage of the sale. It's amazing.

Speaker 1: 6:58

Yeah, bookshoporg is amazing. What about for audiobooks? Do you use Librofm? I do Librofm. Yeah, Mark Pearson's been on the show from Librofm, and that's another great platform.

Speaker 2: 7:11

Same thing. I mean. I'll just I'll get an email that says you know, somebody bought the audiobook of whatever and here's a couple of bucks I'm like thanks.

Speaker 1: 7:18

Yeah, gotta love that passive income.

Speaker 2: 7:21

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 7:22

And what inspired you to open the brick and mortar store Transom Bookshop?

Speaker 2: 7:26

Yeah, it's funny. It happened at a time in my life where this was the tail end of the pandemic. So I think a lot of people can relate to the fact that there seemed to be a lot going on while, at the same time, absolutely nothing going on. And it was this weird kind of fugue state. And I knew a lot of people who were doing something similar. They weren't all opening bookstores, but that year there was a boom of bookstores but a lot of people were trying to figure out what was next. It was just an interesting time in my life.

Speaker 2: 8:00

We had lived up here for a handful of years and I always felt that this town I should say this Tarrytown is wonderful and we'll get into that, but it has everything. It just didn't have a bookstore, but it has everything else. It's an amazing community commutable, walkable, wonderful people. And I just kept walking around being like where's the bookstore? And I heard it enough times that I thought, well, I should probably just put the bookstore in bookstore. And I heard it enough times that I thought, well, I should probably just put the bookstore in. It was one of those things that I knew. If someone else did it, I'd be really happy for them, but I'd also be a little bit bummed that it wasn't me, which is kind of how I've always chosen my jobs too. I'm like, okay, well, how much FOMO would I have in a year if I found out someone else went and did this, and in this case it was a 10 out of 10.

Speaker 2: 8:41

It's a little revisionist for me to say like, oh, I always thought I would open a bookstore. Oh yeah, it was my dream. For anybody who, like you, has a beautiful shelf of books behind them, I think we've always walked by and open you know some open commercial real estate and thought I could fill that with books. Um, but it's just.

Speaker 2: 8:59

It was that that really interesting time, a really introspective time and a time to think about what the next phase of my life was going to be. And one day I walked up the block and was talking to a woman who was closing her store because she was retiring, and the way she talked about owning a retail shop, it suddenly just made it very attainable. It was this thing that seemed really esoteric and it seemed like there were so many conditions that need to be met in order to do this, and she described it in such a way that I thought, oh my God, you mean I could do that, Like I could just open a store, and all of a sudden, everything, just once, the possibility was there, like I went out for a run and I came back and I was like, ah, I'm going to open a bookstore.

Speaker 1: 9:39

It just sort of happened. Yeah, and would you say Tarrytown is a diverse community in terms of age, race and sexual orientation, and how does this affect the curation of the store?

Speaker 2: 9:53

Tarrytown is really unique. We're just one express stop away from Grand Central in Manhattan, so it's a very commutable town and it has always been kind of a commuter town in some regard. But we're also um tarrytown and what is now sleepy hollow was actually until the late 90s was just north tarrytown and they they went through we can get into that, but they went through a very smart uh long contestant but very smart rebrand that has really put the village on the map. So tarrytown and sleepy hollow are two villages in the same zip code, a, a very diverse town because it was a manufacturing town for a long time Went through after some of that manufacturing got up and left and some of those jobs went elsewhere. It was a town that went through a challenging time in the 70s and 80s and so we have a lot of blue collar history.

Speaker 2: 10:40

We are also really diverse. We have a large Hispanic population here but in the last few years after the pandemic you know, being this close to Manhattan, being this close to the cities, it's a great place for people who realize that, well, now their company has picked up stakes and they work from home all the time and so they're paying a premium to live in a place where they don't have to be all the time, and Tarrytown is now full of a lot of younger families, a lot of new families or people aspiring to start a family somewhere, and it just made sense for them to be here, because they're going into the city twice a week instead of five times a week, so we're seeing a lot younger folks come in Still a great racial diversity. We have a great gay community here. We had our first pride event the village's first like. We shut down the streets and flew the flags and just had an awesome time and music and festival and it was just amazing. It was one of the best I'd say one of the best days I've had in this town in seven years.

Speaker 2: 11:39

So it's a really wonderful town and the bookstore is a reflection right, it needs to be a reflection of the community as much as it's my own DNA in the store and my booksellers as well. We've got to sell what the people around here want and it's a really cool, very idiosyncratic, much more so than I ever thought it would be. Just because something's a bestseller does not mean we'll be able to sell it. People come in asking for very specific things and asking for things that are very unique to them and it just honestly, it's a bit more of a challenge in buying because I can't just go give you the top 10. But it makes it a lot more fun and a lot more rewarding when you can put the book in the right hand.

Speaker 1: 12:19

Yes, I agree completely. And because of your close proximity to New York City, do you order most of your books through catalogs or are you in an area where you get regular in-person visits from publishing reps? Quite a few of the indie bookshop owners whom I've spoken with have explained that having visits from the different reps is not something that happens as much as it used to, and many of the bookshop owners are disappointed by this. You know you can't beat a conversation face to face with a rep talking about which upcoming releases they feel would be a good match for each bookshop. I'm guessing having field reps isn't only related to books. I'm sure it's widespread due to the cost of everything right now in the economy.

Speaker 2: 13:09

I think that is a big part of it. That role has either been consolidated or eliminated. There's this big collapse of different roles within the publishing industry, and reps are also PR people, they're also the social media people, they're also the marketers, if the marketing role hasn't been subsumed by the editor. So I think there's a lot of that happening. I'm a very small shop. I'm 50 feet by 10 feet and that's without the fixtures. So even though I cram it to the rafters and I've got about 6,000 items in there, my turn is enough to stay afloat. But it's not enough to attract the attention of a rep who is going to put on some soft-soled shoes and get out there and make some sales. So I get their emails, I get their phone calls, but I don't take offense that I'm not a high enough volume store that they don't think it's worth coming by. It's also pretty niche being a smaller store. It's a narrow target and I think it's just.

Speaker 2: 14:10

They're going to get a lot of no's from me. They're going to come in and say, what about these five books? I'm like none of them really work for me and so I don't blame them for going to the bigger shops and I mostly then do my ordering. I get the Ingram catalogs, I get Pub Weekly. I read the millions, I poke around. I use Edelweiss, I use Book Manager. Book Manager is my POS and I couldn't live without it. They have a great website where you can check sales relative to other stores and I use those sources. And then a lot of recommendations from customers and a lot more art than science.

Speaker 1: 14:41

You wrote an article on Squarespace titled how Do I Get my Book in your Store, in which you covered topics discussed regularly on this podcast. In addition to your comments, I'd also ask the author where do you buy your books, and have you spent time building a relationship with your local indie bookshop? Many authors, particularly self-published authors, don't understand the benefit of an experienced bookseller hand-selling books. With this in mind, can you expand on this idea and also the benefits of new authors understanding what you call reverse booksell me?

Speaker 2: 15:19

Yes, the reverse booksell. I mean, obviously the article came about because enough of people had to come in and ask. It's like the no running sign at the pool. Like you know, that happened because people were running so, so that wasn't preventative. In this case, a lot of people would come in and the conversation's uncomfortable, not because not because I'm uncomfortable talking to the writer, but because I have to say no and I don't like to. I want to be able to help everybody. I want to be able to help these authors. I mean, they are the first point in a very long supply chain that ends with me being able to run a bookstore and I have to love and appreciate that. But that said, I think a lot of writers don't think about the rest of that supply chain outside themselves. Or at least in my conversations with a lot of writers that has become apparent. I won't say all writers, but the conversations that I've had.

Speaker 2: 16:14

It is so frequent for me that somebody barrels into the bookstore and takes three steps and says to me are you the owner? And already I'm like, oh gosh, all right, what do you got? They didn't even look at the store. They're selling a piece of nonfiction that if you went and looked at my shelves which, again, it's a small store, it's 400 square feet you go and look at the shelves, you're going to realize there's no place to put this book. So the sale is very different. It's not impossible, but it's very different.

Speaker 2: 16:39

And all I ask is well, the thesis of the article is if you make it easy for me to sell this, I will buy this all day long. And that's the same thing that's happening when I'm reading about books. If I read about a book online, or if I'm reading the description of a book or I'm looking at the pull quotes on it and I see that three authors I love have put pull quotes on it and the description is really compelling, I'll sell it. But if somebody comes into my store and loves their book so much which I believe every author really does but they can't describe it to me in a way that will make it easy for me to sell, I just can't buy it.

Speaker 2: 17:15

I don't have the room and I'm not going to buy something as a favor, because having a book on the shelf that no one will buy is not a favor to anybody. So the reverse booksell thing is I want them to think about me being in my shoes. When a customer comes in and they say, oh, I'm kind of looking for this, that I say, well, what have you read recently that you liked? And they list a few things and like, do you look at fiction? On fiction, and then they finally say the thing I'm just looking for an author to tell me what's my shelf talker. What can I say in that moment? That's super easy, makes it easy for me to sell it and I'll buy it.

Speaker 1: 17:45

Yeah, I mean. It really gets back to building relationships with booksellers, with the owner of bookshops, with the readers. It's about showing up In a Tweetspeak article. You were asked about creative ways to help local authors and you wrote about your guest bookseller program. It's a super smart idea. So what is the guest bookseller program and has it sparked local author interest? Well, thank, you.

Speaker 2: 18:12

Necessity breeds invention. Again, having a small store and also having a fear of throwing a party that nobody shows up to means that planning an event is pretty hard for me. It's hard emotionally and logistically. I can't put chairs down in my store. I put one chair down, I got a fire hazard. There's just not enough room. Every single square into that store. You're physically close to a book to buy it. So there's no event space and it's the perfect shop for me.

Speaker 2: 18:42

For that reason I would get very stressed out if my store, if I was paying rent on a space in the store that required that I threw events to pay that rent. It's really hard. We're a small town, yes, we're close to Manhattan, but it would have to be a really big author to get people to come out and stand there or sit there and listen to and talk to and get books signed and stand there or sit there and listen to and talk to and get books signed. So what I do instead, because I don't do those kinds of events in the store, I do by the side, I do those. I support outside events. So I'll get a call from local universities, will call me up and say can you bring 20 copies of this book this author's coming. I love doing that. If I sell enough books to cover the gas mileage, I'm happy Because it's a real, just a great way to meet. Also, like two years ago I met Hernan Diaz before he won the Pulitzer, because Sunni had had him at a local college and that was amazing. So I love that I could. I could not have gotten Hernan Diaz to walk in. So today there's authors whose work I love and sometimes I'll reach out to them, sometimes they'll reach out to me.

Speaker 2: 19:44

Writers who are friends of mine, writers who just sort of come across my proverbial desk and I feel like, yes, this is a good fit, I would love to do something for them. I would love to do something with them because I like them. I'm worried about putting a poster up in the window and expecting 30 people to show up, so what I'll do is I'll basically schedule them as a bookseller on a Saturday during a busy season with me and I'll say, from like 12 to four, this author that you may or may not have heard of, and they're going to post it on their own social and everything I'll say. This author you may or may not have heard of is going to be here. I stack their books high on the counter and I treat them like a bookseller and everybody who comes to the store I introduce them. It's much more intimate than a reading. Um, you get to like stand. I've had people come in and we'll stand there and talk to the author for 10 or 15 minutes and I despite the fact that it's not a high volume opportunity these authors are gonna.

Speaker 2: 20:39

I had an author named keith rawson who I loved and he came out from portland because he happened to be in town for Comic-Con. He writes horror novels so he happened to be in town for that, so he took the train up, we hung out. It was a quiet, rainy day. He met a couple of people he loved and he wants to come back, even though he sold like 300 books at Comic-Con. He might have sold 14 at my store, but he really wants to come back because it was just like a nice, nice, fun day, low stakes.

Speaker 1: 21:06

Yeah, and it's like any event, the more often you do it, the more people are going to show up the people who really want to be there, and in your case, it's the people who really want to meet the author. I think it's a great idea. You got any more great ideas like that, Do I?

Speaker 2: 21:22

have other good ideas. Yeah, yeah, let me see I'll reach in my pocket. I'd like to do more. There's a lot of stuff in bookstore ownership, especially being kind of a single stream Like.

Speaker 2: 21:31

I run it by myself. I do all like anything that's not floor book selling I do, and so there's a lot of things on that list that, like I should probably do a guest bookseller on the third Saturday of every month, like I should do that Just one of those things that ends up being like fourth on the to-do list and I never quite get to it. But in October we do it a ton because that's our season.

Speaker 1: 21:53

And for our listeners overseas. Can you explain why October is your?

Speaker 2: 21:59

big season. So you had asked about Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow in the question you sent over. And Sleepy Hollow is the little Salem of the South. People come from far and wide just to be here, where the Headless Horseman was invented or imagined up, and it's really funny. We're like a little Halloween village. We do ghost tours of everything. We have tours of the cemetery. It's just a beautiful time of year to be here because we're in a northeast Hudson River town with beautiful foliage and the weather's great. It's like a little Norman Rockwell painting. But in October I will do more business in October than I will in December. Yeah, so that's my holiday season and it's a lot of fun and people show up in costume all month. That does sound like fun. It's such a riot and so I'll try and schedule authors around that time of year, because there's a built-in audience, especially horror writers, because people just get so excited to meet them.

Speaker 1: 22:50

Yeah, october sounds like a fun time to visit. Okay, now, books are one of the only items sold that carry predefined prices. In other words, a book sold by an indie bookshop in San Francisco, california, where the cost of living is high, or an indie bookshop in Ohio or North Carolina, where the cost of living is lower, the retail book price is the same. I had this discussion on episode 243 with Anne Seaton, the co-executive director of the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, and she spoke about the need to address this issue. Do you have any thoughts on this topic?

Speaker 2: 23:26

I do. I do. This is a really interesting topic because I think about it in a few different ways. One if the problem that we're trying to solve is access to an affordability of books, I think the independent bookstore is a tough place to do that, because we all know that the the book is available in other formats. It's available for free at the library, presumably, hopefully, hopefully, um, or you can get it really cheap somewhere else, and we know that. So I think buying a full price book at a local indie book shop is is I've considered that a luxury item. I mean, hardcover books are 40 bucks. I mean, you know, some of these are really they're pushing them, that's, that's dinner and a cocktail right there, you know. So I maintain that it's worth every penny and that you're, you know, price per hour. You're not going to get any better, cheaper experience out there, but it's still. You know there's some sticker shop, so I know that they can get the book elsewhere.

Speaker 2: 24:26

I think, if the problem that we're trying to solve is keeping indies alive, I think it's interesting. I think when people buy a book for a full price at an independent bookstore, they're doing it because they want to have an independent bookstore. They're doing it to support the shop. It's the same reason I can make a cup of coffee at home for pennies. But on the way home from breakfast this morning I stopped at my local cafe because I love them and I love what they do and they support the local economy and they're great people and I paid $3. So, yeah, 30 bucks is different. But when people buy a book at a bookstore, I think they're doing so with the full knowledge that they're doing it because they want a bookstore in their community and I think a community is enriched by having a bookstore and I think a lot of people feel that and I get people who come in all the time and they say this exact phrase. They say I'd rather get it from you than amazon, even though I know a 30 book is 18 somewhere else and that's a significant price difference.

Speaker 2: 25:20

My hope for the stores in in lower income town, my hope is that their operating costs are lower. You know we pay uh, we pay a premium to be here on a main street in a town that's close to Manhattan with a higher household income. You know the landlord's no dummy, he knows what he can charge. My hope is that in another town, their P&L looks a little different, their operating cost is lower, and so I think that that is helpful to the bookstore. That's not helpful to the book buyer in that case, but if they needed to discount their books I would hope that it's possible for them.

Speaker 2: 25:49

I think there's other things that a bookstore can do. Of course there's nonprofit status so they can get grants, they can get support from their municipality. There's publisher programs like co-ops. You can get very clever with that kind of stuff that can reduce your cost of goods sold. But look, I don't want to let the publishers off the hook either.

Speaker 2: 26:08

We know that indies in the US account for less than 10% of total book sales. That's sad but it's true. I think it was seven and a half or 8%. So if publishers had a program that deeply discounted books, certain books for certain stores in certain towns, the worst case scenario for the publisher is that they would have a few percentage points of a financial hit right, because it's a small markdown on a small market in a small part of their business. I get that. They've got a business to run and I know a lot of people who work in publishing who are underpaid and they're mistreated if they have a job at all. So my empathy runs all three ways. I want to see the independent bookstores survive. I want to see the local book buyers be able to buy them, but I also need publishers upstream to be successful.

Speaker 1: 26:46

Yeah, for sure. I like to remind my listeners to think of a book as a pie and all the people who have gone into making that pie the author, who's maybe spent years writing this book. The editors often there's a team of editors working on a specific book the formatting, which is getting the text organized in the book. The book cover, the marketing. The formatting which is getting the text organized in the book. The book cover, the marketing, the PR, the agent's fees, the publishing fees, the bookseller's percentage. All of these people need to get paid and when books are discounted, that piece of the pie or the piece of the book gets smaller and smaller and smaller. I don't know what the answer is regarding predefined prices on books, but it's great that people are finally talking about this Publishers, indie bookshop owners, booksellers, authors it's important that it's brought to everyone's attention.

Speaker 2: 27:38

I think it is really interesting.

Speaker 2: 27:39

And again, if the problem is access to books, which I do think is a problem, publishers send me ARCs all the time that I don't want and there's a cost to that. I think there's a solution for that. It's not just me raising my hand on a free book and saying please don't send me stuff like this, but I think that there is a solution for them sending books that they are willing to send for free, to get publicity out for them, sending them to the right places, and I think that that could be an interesting stream for that. How many books are they willing to give away to goose the future sales of that book? Well, can those books actually land in the hands of community members? It's neither hurting nor helping the bookstore, but it also keeps. Maybe they have a local group of readers that wouldn't otherwise be able to afford the $32 Barber King solver, but you know, if they got it before it came out in an ARC, that could be another way of getting, just another way of affecting that sort of downstream.

Speaker 1: 28:33

Chris, before opening Transom Bookshop, did you decide on a set of values or a mission statement for the bookshop?

Speaker 2: 28:40

Yeah, well, as you know and you've talked about on the podcast before, an indie bookshop is sort of a mix of its donors DNA and of the community's DNA and because I have three part time booksellers, it's definitely part of their DNA as well. I've got a lot of books on the shelves because they've picked them. But I mean so I, you know I led first with my own personal values and in my house I have two kids and my wife and I like to reinforce this idea all the time. We've got it. We actually have it up on a plaque here. It says be curious, be grateful, be creative and be kind, and that's something that I think about.

Speaker 2: 29:14

It's not up on the wall in the store, but I definitely think about that when I'm buying books. I think about it for sure if I'm supporting an event or if I'm decorating the shop, like what am I supporting when you know so many of the Black History Month and Women's History Month and Pride Month, like those kinds of things, like, am I living up to that? Of course, set of values of curiosity, gratitude, creativity and kindness, and I definitely think about that. When I'm hand-selling books, am I putting the right book in the hand of the right person. Are they going to go off into the world and be smarter, kinder, more loving, more creative, thoughtful person as a result of this experience? And you don't get it right every time it's a tall order to try and enrich the life of a random human every time they come into the store, but it's worth a try.

Speaker 1: 30:01

I love that you have that phrase up in your house. As adults and children, we all need reminding of the curious and kindness aspects of humanity. Okay now, tarrytown is about 25 miles north of Midtown Manhattan and south of the village of Sleepy Hollow. When I visit the area in October, of course are there historical sites you would recommend. I see hiking trails I take because I love to hike vegan restaurants and other independent businesses I can visit while I'm there.

Speaker 2: 30:35

Yes, yes, yes and yes. We would have to have a whole other episode on how much I love Tarrytown. It's really cool. I mean, we're in the county of Westchester, which is a suburb of Manhattan, and a lot of the towns in Westchester feel like suburbs. They're not as walkable or maybe they have a little bit of a town center or a train runs through it, so there's a coffee shop there. The entire town is super unique in that we're one of the Hudson Valley towns. We're right on the river, which is super charming, very Norman Rockwell. You know there's American flags hanging on the posts outside the shop. You know, when we have our major holidays. It's a very sweet town. It's easy to visit, it's easy to get to and we have a really beautiful Main Street. We're one of the few Westchester towns that has like a full sort of dedicated Main Street that you can come and walk up and down. Um, so right on main street I'm, I'm right in the middle of it, which is very nice.

Speaker 2: 31:30

Um, we have the tarrytown music hall. Brings a lot of people here and that has gone through many iterations over the years. Um, it was a movie theater, it was a music hall, it was going out of business. It got saved and now it's back. They actually book really good shows. For being a small Hudson Valley town, um, we get some really good access. Come through Ben Bold is going to be here in a few weeks, and so it's. It's a great. It's a great, um, sort of magnet for traffic when there's a good show or when there's even a week that there's a good show and people are coming to come to town to stay, I see traffic go up. That's always nice.

Speaker 2: 32:03

Right across from me, across the street, is a really good farm-to-table restaurant that has a lot of vegan options and that's a huge dinner spot. We've got a great Mediterranean place just north of me. I am not vegan, so there's a great barbecue place down the block. Two coffee shops, two great pizza shops. It's just plenty to do in a full day or a full weekend, but also just a really wonderful, wonderful walkable place to live. And then we've got our we call the Aqueduct Hiking Trail, which is to call it a hike is generous, but it's a really lovely walk. You might get your boots a little muddy but it's a really nice couple mile walk through all the river towns. We've got a river walk down. So if you go on the other side of the train tracks, there's a river walk, there's a couple of restaurants down there.

Speaker 2: 32:53

It goes to our, our old historic lighthouse. We've got the rockefeller mansion. We, we go back to the revolutionary war. This was where, uh and that is sort of a espionage uh, uh, british plan to upset the american victory and, uh, we, we captured a major john andre here who had a map at his boot and sent him packing. And so there's hundreds of years of history here. That's why our park between Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow is called Patriot's Park. So there's a lot of history and we have obviously the Washington-Irving connection. The book is about Sleepy Hollow, but he opens the book by talking about Tarrytown, and so to have our name in print from 1819, it's just, you know, there's a lot there, so there's plenty to do. And then you got to come see, you got to come visit sometime, mandy, you got to come.

Speaker 1: 33:32

Yes, I do. I want to come in October too, because I think that would be really fun and beautiful. Is there a book, Chris, that you love to hand sell?

Speaker 2: 33:42

Oh, well, I'll say it this way when I find a person who I think this is a good hand sell for, I get very excited, because the best hand sell is any book on the shelf. If it's the right book for that person, that's a magical moment that happens. I would much, much, much rather pull a random book off the shelf that I've never read but that is really going to connect with a person, than try and get somebody to come in and read my favorite book. So it's very much. It's a very empathic experience to have somebody come in and you have to ask them a lot of questions and be like okay, so I haven't read this, but my bookseller has, and this is his favorite, you know, of all the Kristen Hanna books books, it's his favorite one. So read this one. And I haven't read it.

Speaker 2: 34:23

But right now, um, I'm pushing a book called users by colin winett, which is a great combination of things that I love. It's kind of a tech cautionary tale. It's a little bit of like a big tech um satire thriller, but then it's got like a slow burn horror kind of angle. It's sort of like if the TV show Severance, if that maybe fell in the hands of Stanley Kubrick that's how you could imagine and he's a great guy. He did an interview with me, so he says little typed up interview on the website. He's written some really great books, so that was a book that I was just really delighted and if I find somebody for whom that's a good match, it's a really gratifying match.

Speaker 1: 35:03

I agree, and I think hand selling books in a bookshop is one of the funnest things I've ever done. I loved it when I did it. So much fun. Okay, what are you currently reading?

Speaker 2: 35:14

Oh, you know, I'm traditionally I'm strictly fiction and poetry and I'll you know, maybe out of 100 books I'll read a couple of nonfiction. But this year it's been a bit of a turn. I was recently inspired by an event that I helped host for a book that was about the invisible burden, or the burden of invisible labor that modern moms have, and something that they face is a lot of they carry the weight of the family. The book is called Mom Rage and it was over at our local JCC. It was a really interesting event. I was ostensibly the only guy in the room, so I kind of sat in the back and I was invisible because I was the bookseller and I got to hear this very passionate conversation from moms, many of whom I know from the store, and a lot of it was illuminating some shortcomings of their partners, specifically of their male partners, and so I read that book and I was thinking a lot about where's this conversation for men and are we hearing this and are we helping with this? And that led to me thinking about just sort of general masculinity and so I've been on a kick with that. I actually actually I got four or five local dads who who are in a discussion group with me.

Speaker 2: 36:25

We just read of boys and men by richard reeves, which is a really compelling, very objective, very data-driven study of just what men are facing around the world, everything from underemployment to what he calls unmarriageability which was a complicated word to full-on depression. I learned that on your side of the pond the leading cause of death for men under 50 is suicide. Oh my goodness, which is just mind-boggling. And so, without him editorializing, he lays out these statistics and says don't you see, there's a problem here? And he makes a couple of policy recommendations. So we read that first. Next we're reading Patriarchy Blues and I'm concurrently reading a book called I Don't Want to Talk About it by Terrence Reel, which is about male depression and how it actually manifests and should be treated differently than depression among women. So it's been a really interesting study. I almost feel like I'm taking an an independent study college course on it. So I'm about four books into the topic. It's been really illuminating. It's not always as uplifting, but it's, I feel like it's really, it's a really important conversation right now.

Speaker 1: 37:33

I love the fact that you've started a community around this subject. All from being the bookseller at this event with all women and then reading these follow-up books. That's wonderful.

Speaker 2: 37:45

And I will say it was mostly guys that I met from the store too. A couple of them were, like you know, daycare dads that I knew. A couple of them knew each other, but not everybody knew everybody, and every single guy I reached out to said, hell, yes, like this is the thing I want to talk about. So another hat tip to just Tarrytown being a great place of really wonderful, thoughtful people, that guys wanted to have this kind of conversation.

Speaker 1: 38:06

Chris, it's been great chatting with you.

Speaker 2: 38:08

You too. Wait, wait, hold on. I told you what I'm reading. What are you reading? I have to know.

Speaker 1: 38:13

Oh boy, okay. Well, I have a 2B red pile that is probably taller than me right now and I'm only five foot three, but that's a lot of books, probably taller than me right now and I'm only five foot three, but that's a lot of books.

Speaker 1: 38:24

Anyway, I recently finished reading Quickly While they Still have Horses, which is a collection of short stories by Belfast author Jan Carson. Previously Jan has written the Firestarters, the Raptures. She's a brilliant writer. I happen to have a soft spot for Irish authors, so I think she's wonderful she's actually coming out here soon and quickly. While we still have horses is her first book to be published by Simon Schuster here in the USA. A book I'm going to recommend is called Total Garbage how we Can Fix Our Waste and Heal Our World, by Edward Humes how we Can Fix Our Waste and Heal Our World by Edward Humes another wonderful author. And you just sent me the Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving, so I'll be reading that one again. I'm also reading the follow up to TJ Klune's House in the Cerulean Sea, titled Somewhere Beyond the Sea, and my backlist reading is TC Boyle.

Speaker 2: 39:19

You read any of his books Long time ago and a lot of his books Long time ago and a lot of his short fiction over the years, because he's well anthologized and shows up in the New Yorker so but I haven't read any long form fiction of his in a while.

Speaker 1: 39:31

Yeah, and I enjoyed his latest novel, blue Skies. There are so many wonderful books out there, written by wonderful authors. We are very lucky.

Speaker 2: 39:43

And I think the direction that the industry is going in is so interesting. I mean, there's so much equity, right. They're really pushing voices that have not been heard before and they're really pushing so much more unique perspective and unique storytelling and I think I'm so grateful to have started an independent bookstore in this era. I think, post pandemic and I look at a post hopefully post Trump we all feel so much more compelled to put these voices faced out in a place that someone's going to find it, as opposed to was like I, you know, I carry it as a diversity play. No, no, no, no, like we carry it because it's essential reading now and I think that that's been. I'm so happy to see the industry moving that direction, but it's just like it's hard to get a book made now and so you feel like the stuff that's landing is so good.

Speaker 2: 40:26

Maybe it's just because I've been in you know, maybe I'm reading more and I'm in a bookstore, but it seems to me like.

Speaker 1: 40:31

It just seems to me like it's getting better, and I also think that having more books available in translation adds to our plethora of great reading.

Speaker 2: 40:40

Yes.

Speaker 1: 40:41

Thanks for chatting with me today, Chris. It's been fun and I wish you all the best with Transom Bookshop.

Speaker 2: 40:46

Well, I'm really grateful that we were able to catch up today. This was a lot of fun. Thanks, Mandy.

Speaker 1: 40:53

You've been listening to my conversation with Chris Stipe from Transom Bookshop in Tarrytown, new York. To help the show reach more people, please share episodes with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. To find out more about the Bookshop Podcast, go to thebookshoppodcastcom and make sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to the show. You can also follow me at Mandy Jackson Beverly on X, instagram and Facebook and on YouTube at the Bookshop Podcast. If you have a favorite indie bookshop that you'd like to suggest we have on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you via the contact form at thebookshoppodcastcom. The Bookshop Podcast is written and produced by me, mandy Jackson-Beverly, theme music provided by Brian Beverly, executive assistant to Mandy, adrian Otterhan, and graphic design by Frances Farala. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time. Bye.