A Cozy Signing / Meet & Greet with Joe Casey Tomorrow (Wednesday 25th [not the 26th!], 3-5PM)
Plus some gossip about a rival store who won't be named
We’ve been saving up for a long time to bring Joe Casey, writer extraordinaire and occasional guest of the Tuesday Show out here and if everything goes smoothly, he’ll be by tomorrow in the flesh at 1708A Martin Luther King Jr Way on Wednesday from 3-5PM.
If you haven’t already got them, we’ve got a good supply of Joe Casey’s books like BloodSquadSeven and GØDLAND on hand, but we also have some unusual signing ideas for Joe. If you’re curious what Casey looks like, here’s a hyper-accurate drawing of Casey by local artist and Church of Fantastic Comics member in good standing, “V”. (The “V” stands for “V”)
If we get Casey to write a pithy message on this portrait, like “Have an Awesome Summer”, that’s technically a one-of-a-kind writer/artist collaboration between our Fantastic Church Member “V” and Casey, right?
Speaking of official, we’ve also made a Certificate of Authenticity you can print out at home to prove you got your book signed by Joe Casey. It works on the Honor System, which is not the most perfect way to authenticate anything, but you have to admit, it’s the most honorable!
How to responsibly spread rumors about the demise of our rivals
Over the years we’ve had our share of real or imagined rivalries with fellow bookstores (whether they know it or not!), but when juicy rumors pop up of one closing, it’s best to hold off dishing about it until it actually happens (or if Uel is feeling spicy, on the Tuesday Show). The fact is, bookstores closing in Berkeley is unfortunately a rumor you could completely make up and still end up being right.
So without naming names, what I will say is that the potentially closing bookstore in question isn’t a comic shop per se, but it’s also not not a comic shop, if that makes sense.
With that caveat in mind, I want to propose a model for a kind of bookstore that could actually be sustainable in our trying times, and especially with the uncertain nature of comic retailing, might be one we could adopt ourselves, or at least encourage others to try. Rivals or not, we can’t keep having bookstores fold around us!
The typical model of a bookstore in a college town has a mix of new books, many of which are sold to incoming students, and also used books bought from graduating students. This constant refresh of clientele and books made for a cycle of life that bookstores used to be able to count on in Berkeley.
But what if instead of buying books, customers simply gave them to us, with key titles resold to keep the lights on, but the bulk being returned to the public as part of a curated free bookstore?1
To be fair, this is not an original idea. There actually was a free bookstore in Berkeley like this about ten years ago, and as far as I know, they didn’t disappear because it wasn’t sustainable, but for the more mundane reason that their lease was up.