East Bay Booksellers
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East Bay Booksellers
@ebbooksellers.bsky.social
4.6K followers 73 following 610 posts
We are a bookstore -- a good one, we think! -- selling new books -- good ones, we hope! -- in Oakland, California.
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ebbooksellers.bsky.social
Our last newsletter of the year (probably).

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Hi everybody, A weird thing happened after I became a business owner: I started loving numbers. This isn't to say I'm good at math or that I'm an expert at interpreting what's churned out by spreadsheets and in graphs. I am, however, prone to play in them like a kid might a puddle. As we steer this store into the thick of the holidays, numbers definitely start adding up. • I'm told that at least 1/3 of our business is conducted between Thanksgiving and New Years. To my ears, that's always felt wrong, but l've never been able to disprove it. So, I reckon it's true. The commercial side of the holidays is wearisome to me, but it is a crucial part to sustaining the store. Nevertheless, I try not to measure the success of the store strictly by its sales. It's part of the equation, of course, but mostly I judge it in terms of readiness. Ready for what? Scores of people would be nice, so ample stock is necessary, but also for people to do something this time of year often resists: take their time and browse. I'm happy to report East Bay Booksellers is primed and ready.
December 6, 2025 at 8:01 PM
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Alarm! Sound the alarm! Membership for Stationery Club 2026 is now open! The retention rate for this limited edition subscription service is high, and they go quick!

www.ebbooksellers.com/stationery-c...
December 6, 2025 at 6:38 PM
ebbooksellers.bsky.social
December 5, 2025 at 5:20 AM
ebbooksellers.bsky.social
If you have an order or hold at a bookstore, I reckon right about now is when they’re REALLY hoping you come and get it.
December 3, 2025 at 9:07 PM
ebbooksellers.bsky.social
Went a somewhat different route to saying the same thing in this Small Business Saturday Instagram essay.
Why shop local? There are a whole heap of economic reasons that people smarter than me have detailed at length. & this being a smart area, they're maybe persuasive to many. But I'm fond of more immeasurable reasons. The visceral stuff of passion & principle. One such: shopping locally is simply more human. It's sometimes messy, with our maelstrom of emotions & personalities. Expectations clash in an interpersonal way that can't be explained away by some appeal to robotic failure somewhere in the logistical chain. No ... sometimes people just mess up. But then, the flip side, they sometimes come through in a big way. Often by accident, and sometimes the least possible effort. Somebody says aloud randomly the word you've been trying to remember for a week. You overhear a recipe. You see a blind date gone horribly wrong, & more deeply appreciate your current life choices. These are the sort of thing the non-local corporates do not simply not care about, but are actively against. Oh, they'll depict such in commercials, but the scripted emotional tugs of laughter and sadness are patently opposite of the real things. Shopping locally puts us in a position to be genuinely & immediately surprised. Which for me is one of the most defiant things we can do in these most inhuman of times.
November 29, 2025 at 5:18 PM
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New you can use.
A quick note about hours: the only day affected by the holiday is the holiday itself, Thursday. Whereupon we are closed, presumably either sleeping in, reading, spending time with family & friends, conspiring, reminiscing, brooding — or some combination thereof. Before and after all that, we are open our normal hours.
November 26, 2025 at 5:41 PM
ebbooksellers.bsky.social
Just added a temporary holiday popup note to the website. Get ‘em while the gettin’s good!
Holiday Ordering Advice The earlier you order the better, no matter the book. If you’re ordering university press books, aim for around Dec. 5 — this will help us get you the best price (direct from the publisher). Everything else aim for no later than Dec. 15th. We have a ton of great things in-store always ... and when in doubt, gift cards are always great (& never expire).
November 22, 2025 at 10:46 PM
ebbooksellers.bsky.social
As always, my favorite parts are the ones that fell to the cutting room floor.
When I turned fifty this past April, only one thing really seemed to change: I started reminiscing. Up to that point, I was somewhat allergic to nostalgia. I had little interest in photos of places I’d been, or in stories about things I had done. I would casually refer to the largest portion of my life as a collection of past lives, which were at that point mouldering in my memory. But something about suddenly (it only took half a century) being neither particularly old, nor certainly young sparked a desire … not to return or grasp onto what was, nor to grade or cast judgement or even to excavate it for some revelatory truth. No, I found myself simply (if it’s really so simple) wanting more consciously to bear witness to what was.
November 22, 2025 at 2:29 AM
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Been here so many times, but y’all, the Fox is so lovely, isn’t it?!
November 13, 2025 at 3:40 AM
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One of the perks of bookselling is you sometimes get invited to sell at very cool things.
Marquee of the Fox Theater in Oakland, announcing Patti Smith’s 50th anniversary of “Horses” show tonight.
November 13, 2025 at 1:57 AM
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“ Culture might seem a less consequential right than due process or free assembly. Its infringement makes less spectacular news than police action, protests, or Washington partisanship. In this way, the gross repeal of a right that took decades to build is at risk of going unreported. Lacking opportunities to encounter, explore, and create culture, social bonds weaken, engagement with the best of our communities fades, and economic growth slackens. Without culture, our capacities for self-government atrophy, our local communities wane, our intellectual and emotional lives wither and default to AI slop, and our paths to meaning and fulfillment close.”
October 26, 2025 at 1:23 AM
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Not having a particularly moderate position on the matter, I was happy to *moderate* a panel at the Heartland bookseller conference on small presses & bookstores. One of the recurring themes was scale. And people who know me, know how much I love conversations about that! The short version is this: it’s never been easier (insofar as any of this is ever easy) or more important for bookstores to champion small presses, not least because they so closely resembles our aims & ambitions … & fiscal challenges. Our fortunes, such as they are, are indelibly linked. It was so fun hearing from Mona at Other Press, Casey at LittlePuss, James at Leviathan, and even my nemesis (jk!) Javier at Exile in Bookville. At a time when there’s always some fresh new horror beginning & some beloved thing ending, art helps us imagine and create new ways to forward. (Samuel Beckett — 'You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on.')
October 16, 2025 at 1:48 PM
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In support of Mark Bray, and in full disdain for fascism.
Photo of a stack of Mark Bray’s book ANTIFA, with one sign saying “Take one! Death to fascism, freedom to the people.” Frame of stack of books with a sign that reads, “these are FREE / take one, read it, share it! / Turning Point USA has put the author on a “list” resulting in death threats against Mark Bray, his family & his students. Consequently, he & his family have had to flee the country. If you are able to support the purchase of more copies so we can continue to give these away, please let us know!”
October 10, 2025 at 10:46 PM
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Drink an afternoon espresso, everybody, because we’re staying open late this Friday, 10/3! Here for your slightly later than normal book cravings until 9pm!
October 3, 2025 at 2:35 AM
ebbooksellers.bsky.social
Ta-Nehisi Coates expresses here on Ezra Klein’s podcast a fundamental ethic that informs my sense even of what should be & will not be housed in a welcoming, truly curious bookstore. As ever, he gives us a lot to think about.
All I can go to is my role as a writer, and my role as a writer is to state things as clearly as I possibly can, to make them in such a way that they haunt, to state truths and to reinforce the animating notion of my politics — which is that all humanity is equal and is worthy of that. And I actually think all of the political and policy positions that I find myself in sympathy with are attempting to affect that in the real world. So, again, I’m putting aside your piece, but I’m just thinking about the moment we’re in. When I hear or see people who are honored and commemorated in such a way that they almost become a national religious figure, and then I see their content, and I see that their content is actively destructive to humanity, I have to draw a line there. I think what you try to do is — again, this is the difference. I don’t necessarily have the crystal ball to say that in this time I’m going to be able to convince a majority of people that, for instance — let’s just take the thing that’s hot right now: Trans folks are human beings and deserve humanity. Although I think most people know that you shouldn’t say what he said — like, that [expletive] is rude. It’s just rude to talk to people like that. And I think most people know that. So as I’m thinking my way through the question, I actually think that’s not a hard line to draw. I think not calling people out of their name, that’s actually a basic value that most people have. And I think people who think it’s not, who are pushing that, are actually themselves on the other side of the line.
September 28, 2025 at 7:25 PM
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Is wishing the Times would replace Bret Stephens with a better writer & thinker a free speech issue?
September 24, 2025 at 2:58 PM
ebbooksellers.bsky.social
gah. My bluesky skills are waning. Now with Alt text.
Bookseller holiday book preview. Two legends of book selling, Brad Johnson from East Bay Booksellers and Stephen Sparks from Pt Reyes. Books joins us to talk about the most interesting books of the fall. November 5.
September 16, 2025 at 5:42 PM
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Ooops. Forgot the image.
September 16, 2025 at 5:28 PM
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*gouges out eyes*
August 27, 2025 at 3:35 AM
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Series of texts that read: Overheard : I wouldn’t like Brad !!! 🤣🤣🤣 I think they were looking at the staff recs Screencap of Nathan Fielder saying: “In reality I’m very fun, relaxed, and easy going.”
August 24, 2025 at 6:52 PM
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New newsletter is possibly in your email inbox (or spam … or deleted folder) now!

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Over the years, I’ve increasingly de-emphasized trying to anticipate what will be popular. Yes, of course, we’ll have a big stack of the new Steph Curry book. And while I’ll be overjoyed to sell them all and then some, I’ve always thought it was books like Rosalyn Drexler’s To Smithereens or Lavinia Greenlaw’s Vast Extent where a purchase turns into a memory. In truth, filling a store’s shelves is the most fun part of a business that also requires them be emptied. We sold books for the first time at this year's San Francisco Art Book Fair. What an amazing event! I didn't have time to venture far or often beyond our six-foot table, but it was definitely one of the highlights of my bookselling year. It’s one of the great commercial-materialist dilemmas that in order for an industry to be economically sustainable, its product is often just one user away from its end. A sort of built-in obsolence, I think they call it. That books can be both art objects and practices throws a wrench in this cycle. I quite like that.
August 9, 2025 at 5:58 PM
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EBB: Experimenting with being magnanimous
Text message: “But I could be wrong. Been experimenting with being magnanimous.” Response: “I **NEED*** EBB merch that says ‘East Bay Booksellers: Experimenting with being magnanimous’l”
August 8, 2025 at 3:53 AM
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Forgot a picture!
August 7, 2025 at 10:01 PM
ebbooksellers.bsky.social
We of course have great affection for all our books, but *my* love for the art sections is unabashedly hitting “playing favorite” heights.
August 7, 2025 at 9:47 PM
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At the close of this month our fundraising page will close. Some folks had some questions about the final update.

Upshot: (1) don’t cry for us. The fundraising insulates us for a bit from the bite of our diminished sales. Nevertheless, (2) we would love to see more of you swing by!
Some people have asked me for more details about what I meant in my GoFundMe update about sales at our present location being “persistently slower” than before our move. The gist of the questions being, “Should we be worried?” The quick answer is this: no, it’s mostly MY worry, not yours. I assume if you’re asking, you’re probably pretty invested in the space in a variety of ways already. Worrying about it right now shouldn’t be one more such way. But it is a reality. We expected and planned for decreased sales in a new location, but both the level of that decrease and its persistence have been challenges. And we’ll face them, as we always have. Which includes me being pretty honest (certainly when asked) about the situation. It goes against my instincts, and certainly what I’ve been told is “good business,” to be so frank. But our present situation and your role in such poses an interesting exception, I’d say.
July 24, 2025 at 3:13 AM