Baby Boomers Still the Spine of Independent Book Selling

Bookstores have a long history as allies and nurturers of social movements, and a generation of owners came of age when works ranging from Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22” to Eldridge Cleaver’s “Soul on Ice” were an integral part of the uprisings of the ’60s and ’70s.Shanks, Mitchell Kaplan of Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida, and Kris Kleindienst of Left Bank Books in St. Louis are among many baby boomers who founded stores with little sense of how to run a business, but a profound sense of purpose. They are now pillars of a smaller but still vital independent-bookstore community, and models for the wave of younger owners who have opened stores in recent years.

Source: Baby Boomers Still the Spine of Independent Book Selling – ABC News