Greenwich Village

Print is alive and kicking. Greenwich Village's Strand Book Store reported record sales Monday - that's one for the books. The Strand says its record sales means "Bookstores are not dead." 

"Yesterday we had our best sales day in the history of 86 years at the store. So thankful for all of you," the bookstore tweeted early Christmas Eve.

Forty-four years ago this month, in December 1969, I quit my job as a manager of a bookstore in New York City's Greenwich Village and began to write the Anarchist Cookbook. My motivation at the time was simple; I was being actively pursued by the US military, who seemed single-mindedly determined to send me to fight, and possibly die, in Vietnam. I wanted to publish something that would express my anger. It seems that I succeeded in ways that far exceeded what I imagined possible at the time.

There was a time when, throwing back a pint or two at McSorley’s or Kettle of Fish in Greenwich Village, you’d be likely to rub elbows with the likes of e.e. cummings, Jack Kerouac or Washington Irving. This month, we take you on a tour of legendary literary watering holes in the Village. We plan to pay an actual visit during our Publishing Business Conference Pub Crawl. Who knows, we may stumble across a future bestselling author!

Creating a book is one thing; selling is something completely different. Gutenberg was both printer and publisher, as was Aldus, Plantin, Caxton and almost all the early printers.