Issue Four

In the back of Talking Leaves Books’ happy and eclectic clutter, Jonathon Welch, co-founder of Talking Leaves Bookstore, sat down with Keith Frome, Headmaster of the Elmwood Franklin School, and spent more than an hour ruminating on the history and meaning of the store. The conversation ranged from poetry to philosophy to distribution systems to marketing to technology: the very sacred and profane stew of an independent bookseller. Jonathon Welch, part professorial, part poet, part CEO, happily reflected on what it all adds up to or doesn’t add up to. Here are some excerpts.

KF: We want to recognize Talking Leaves as a significant and important Buffalo cultural institution. How did it all begin? What is your story?

  JW: It’s a complicated history. A local woman started a bookstore called Everyman’s Bookstore in 1971 here in the University District. Basically, it was a small store and a bunch of us who had been hanging out at the store bought it from her and tried to run it as a co-op. In 1978 we changed the name to Talking Leaves. We decided that we had to change the original name. She had named it after the Everyman Library, but we had received one call too many from people who took the name too literally. We were often getting calls from people who were looking for adult material and stuff like that. It was not the kind of business we were looking for. Talking Leaves comes from the Native American tradition where book pages were seen as “leaves” that “talked.”

KF: How did you get to Buffalo?

JW: I came to Buffalo from Wisconsin to study English at the University of Buffalo. That was when Olson and Ginsberg were here.

KF: How did you get involved in the book business coming from the academic world?

JW: We didn’t think of it as going into business. A bunch of us wanted to take a break and we had been customers of the bookstore so we bought it with the very idea of making it into a cultural center. In fact, we applied for a 501-C-3 because we were running poetry readings and art openings and things like that but the IRS rejected our application because we were a bookstore first.

KF: Well, what was this block like 30 years ago? I am assuming that the store was here.

JW: Yes, we were on the same block though we have moved several times. This block 30 years ago had a lot more foot traffic. But with the changes in the neighborhood and the university moving that has changed. The university has, in its way, had a negative impact on the neighborhood, though it has also contributed as well. The change from undergraduate to graduate students has not been all bad. Graduate students are generally seen to be better tenants because they party less. But 30 years ago there were a lot more retail stores from Hertel on up this way.

KF: Can you divide the history of the store into historical epochs?

JW: Well I am not sure that I can divide it into epochs. The store has just kind of grown, though we especially grew in the 1980’s as did most independent bookstores across the country. We have moved three times. We moved to the present location in 1994 from a location by the food co-op. The fixtures in this store come from a wide variety of other stores in Buffalo and sometimes customers will recognize a bookcase from some other store.

KF: How have the chains like Barnes and Noble and Borders affected Talking Leaves?

JW: They definitely affected our business in several ways. One is they take sales from us, but not in such volume that they put us out of business. My compatriots in other cities have been much more hurt by the superstores.

KF: Why haven’t you been hurt as badly?

JW: I honestly don’t know why that is. I think our connection to the university has helped us. I also think that there has been a lot of publicity in the past couple of years about independent bookstores. When Borders first opened by the mall, one reporter for the Buffalo News thought that it was the height of civilization. Just think to have all of that music and all of those books in one place and you can get a cup of coffee. But independent bookstores through the American Booksellers Association did a lot to spread the news about what we can offer. Amazon sold themselves as having any book that was in print. But it wasn’t like they had those books. All independent stores, forever, have had access to any book in the same way that Amazon does. Amazon created this perception that they had it and they could get it for you quick. But we’ve always been able to do that.

KF: That’s right. It’s still three to seven day’s wait whether you order it through Amazon or ask Talking Leaves to get it for you.

JW: It’s still the same wait. Anybody who had been a good, regular customer of any independent bookstore in the country certainly enjoyed that same amount of hassle or lack thereof as an Amazon customer. We just never advertised ourselves in the way they did.

KF: Can you order over the Talking Leaves website?

JW: You can email us your order but it is not a secure server. We can mail the book to the customer or they can pick it up.

KF: On your website you give a mission statement in which you use the word “idiosyncratic”. Your store is indeed idiosyncratic and that’s a good thing. You clearly thrive by being who you are and catering to the idiosyncrasies of your customers. We know that similar independent bookstores across the country have failed, including some very famous stores in Manhattan like the fabled Books and Company. How are you able to be successfully idiosyncratic in a place like Buffalo? What does this say about Buffalo?

JW: Well, I am not sure we’re thriving.

KF: But you’re open.

JW: Well yes. We are open. Open for business. I’m not sure it would work in other places, but I am not sure why it works here. I think we are truly idiosyncratic and I think that Buffalo takes a bad rap in a lot of ways. For instance, the thing that we are most known for nationally is our poetry collection. Talking Leaves is one of the best poetry bookstores in the country. Charles Olson and local poets like Robert Creely have always done well here. But there is no one typical customer for us. They come from all walks of life and all professions from blue collar to white collar. We are a quirky store . . .

KF: So quirkiness is a market niche because humanity is essentially quirky?

JW: I think it is because humanity is quirky.

KF: On your website you make a distinction between data and spirit. Is the difference between a superstore and an independent bookstore that there you get the data and here you get spirit?

JW: Well to some extent that’s true. I make a couple of distinctions: one is between data and spirit and another is between customers and consumers. What Amazon will do is tell you what to buy on the basis that you have bought a number of books on World War I or the War of 1812. They would see you as a consumer. And they see you based on the data they get from your sales record. What they will do then is pitch to you constantly books that you will probably like because your neighbors like them and people like you like them. Whereas what we will do is say we know Keith, he’s in here every week, he likes this kind of book and maybe this other kind of book. We try to get to know you as a real individual. The data thing is linked to the consumer thing because we do not reduce you to a set of statistics based on what you make, what kind of car you drive and the fact that you have two kids and a wife and she works etc. We try to work with the real you. We treat you as a customer.

KF: Let’s talk about your recent expansion?

JW: Talking Leaves Elmwood is located next to Cafe Aroma on Elmwood Avenue. Cafe Aroma and Talking Leaves are two separate businesses with a door connecting the two stores. You can buy your coffee and walk into the bookstore and buy your books and walk back into the cafe. We had always been approached throughout the years by people who live in the city, to expand. People from the West Side or North Buffalo just don’t naturally come by our Main Street location. When we started, we basically went to friends of the store and raised the money in modest amounts. We just did the same thing to open the new store, but the cost this time around is a lot more money.

KF: As we conclude here, could you recommend two books, one nonfiction and one fiction that you may not necessarily find face-out at a Borders?

JW: I’d recommend John Wray’s novel The Right Hand of Sleep published by Knopf, and Ross King’s Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture published by Walker Books.