Like a favorite book, read and re-read, loaned out, and then pushed off a bookshelf by newer titles, Denver’s Tattered Cover was headed to the landfill. The independent bookstore was snatched from the trash pile this week – a messy bankruptcy proceeding that documented $1.6 million in debt and $50,000 in unpaid rent — for a second chance. The immediate threat of closure has been avoided by the bookstore’s sale to global goliath Barnes & Noble, a company with the means to pay off the debt and keep all four remaining Tattered Cover stores open and books on the shelves. But the death of this institution could come in another way – the whittling away of public spaces, the closing of doors to local authors, and the end to partnerships like the Pen and Podium series. The Tattered Cover could be rebound beyond recognition, even though the name and location remain the same. But we are hopeful that will not be the case. In 2022, The New York Times proclaimed that in the publishing world, Barnes & Noble had gone from ‘villain to hero” in a collective stand by booksellers against Amazon, where shoppers can find the exact book they are looking for at deep discount, but cannot “discover” new titles from obscure authors and small publishers. The CEO of Barnes & Noble has pushed back on the Walmart-ification of its 600 retail stores in America with the embrace of local flare, much to the chagrin of marketing experts. All of this is encouraging that Tattered Cover may even return to its 1994 roots when it occupied a two-story warehouse space in the then-ragged LoDo location at 16th and Wynkoop, not with an actual move but with an embrace of Denver’s culture at its remaining stores on East Colfax, in Littleton’s Aspen Grove, in Denver’s International Airport, and the kids’ store in Aurora’s Stanley Marketplace and the store at. Twenty-eight years ago Tattered Cover was run by Joyce Meskis, a fierce advocate for free speech and a successful entrepreneur who took a small store in Cherry Creek to the top of the New York Times list of best booksellers. John Hickenlooper and Dan Recht paid tribute to Meskis after her death in 2022 at the age of 80 in an opinion column for The Denver Post that captured exactly what makes Tattered Cover so special: “Joyce created an ambiance in the Tattered Cover that felt almost like an extension of one’s home.
Comment on Editorial: Will Barnes & Noble save or destroy Tattered Cover?
The Denver Post Editorial Board, Denver Post
Thu, 06/20/2024 - 5:00am
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