McNally Jackson
Location: 52 Prince Street, New York, NY 10012
Founded: 2004
Mood: The Mood at McNally Jackson is subdued -- classier, perhaps than that of a used bookstore like Housing Works. The books they display out front are mostly shiny, new hard-covers, and your browsing experience is accompanied by soft jazz and the gurgling of espresso machines. That being said, the clientele is still a funky crowd of lower-east-siders, as is the staff. McNally Jackson has a cafe, slightly separated from the main bookstore, where they serve coffee, pastries, etc.
5 Things that Caught My Eye:
- The Espresso Self-Publishing Machine for printing books on demand
- A large and diverse magazine collection
- Over the cafe books hang from the ceiling and book pages are plastered on the walls
- They have teamed up with the Gotham Writer's Workshop and offer a number of writing classes and events
- The space is pretty small and enclosed (though it has two stories) and is FULL of books--- though not a lot of seating.
- I spoke with one of the buyers for the store, who was manning the information desk that day.
She gave me these three suggestions for 20-somethings:
- WE THE ANIMALS by Justin Torres
- PLAY IT AS IT LAYS by Joan Didion
- A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN by Virginia Woolf
She also told me these five fun-facts about the store:
- All of their employees "really like" working there
- All the employees email each other constantly about what they are reading
- Each employee is a specialist in the particular field they manage in the store
- They host "amazing" events
- They have a book machine [as I mentioned] which they can use to print books on demand. Mostly these are requests to print both self-published books and out-of-print books that are in the public domain.
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