Ask a Bookseller: How has bookselling changed since you started out?

Welcome back to Ask a Bookseller, a monthly column in which folks from amazing indie bookstores across the nation answer authors’ burning questions. Y’know, stuff that’s obvious to booksellers but shrouded in mystery to us writers, a la…

• How do you gauge if an in-store event was a “success”?

• How can authors let bookstores know about their upcoming release?

• Can stores return autographed copies to the publisher?

Be sure to give the bookshops helping us out lots of love (and traffic), and comment to share the questions you’d like answered. (And if you run an indie bookstore and would like to be featured, hit me up!)

Today’s bookseller is Scott Abel, co-owner of Solid State Books in Washington, DC. I loved his grounded yet optimistic take on bookstores’ role in modern society. Enjoy!

Jake and I started Solid State Books in 2017 because we thought there was a need for a bookstore in DC’s H Street neighborhood. We are well-versed in marrying new books and the publishers’ offerings with what our neighbors and book lovers want. We pride ourselves on being one of the city’s best living rooms.

In 2023 we opened a second location on 14th Street, a neighborhood that we had both lived in for over a decade. Solid State to me represents independent bookselling done well—joyously, calmly, professionally.

The best thing about being a bookseller is being committed to a life of reading and learning. It’s humbling to remember that, through books, there is always more to discover. Bookselling is a great daily exercise in keeping me curious.

There really isn’t a worst part, but it can sometimes feel a bit like groundhog day. It’s hard to stay focused on longer-term goals when you spend so much time in the daily rinse and repeat.

I started bookselling in 2003 part-time and overnight, midnight to 8am. By all rights I should not be here. Now I work during the day, but it’s still boots on the ground, 60 hours a week, caring and speaking to strangers and friends about books.

So that hasn’t changed, but there are some good shifts, like publishing more Black authorship and more queer authorship, and the respect for genres like romance has come a long way.

As for the challenges, I think bookselling has always been an effort in upholding the objective value of books in our culture. This just gets harder; we all know why. I try to hold on to the value of one-on-one interactions and our community.

Thank you so much, Scott! Friends, be sure to give Solid State some love, and let me know in the comments what else you’d like to learn from booksellers.