My Bookstore: Octavia Books

My Bookstore, a collection of tributes to America’s indie booksellers by more than 80 well-known writers, will be published on November 13. Thanks to Black Dog & Leventhal, over the next several weeks, BTW will be featuring excerpts from the collection alongside interviews with featured booksellers. First up is author Michael Tisserand and Octavia Books [1]’ co-owner Tom Lowenburg.

In this excerpt, Tisserand, the author of The Kingdom of Zydeco and Sugarcane Academy: How a New Orleans Teacher and His Storm-Struck Students Created a School to Remember (Harvest), recalls an experience at the bookstore after many members of the community sought refuge there following Hurricane Katrina:

I recall this now in an attempt to explain just what it felt like to walk through the door of Octavia Books on a Saturday evening in November 2005, just shy of three months after the frightful storm and the criminal levee collapse that we call “Katrina.” Octavia was the first bookstore in New Orleans to reopen, and on this night there were hundreds of people crowded into a small, rectangular, shelflined room. The occasion was a reading for Why New Orleans Matters, a book-length treatise that was written in a white heat by my friend Tom Piazza.

There were reunions that night, both planned and unexpected. Tears poured even more copiously than the wine. My primary memory of the reading itself was a blistering passage about former first lady Barbara Bush, who had visited a shelter in Houston and commented that the evacuees on the cots “were underprivileged anyway,” so it was all “working very well for them.” I will never forget, nor will I ever want to forget, the feeling of standing together in that packed, humid, book-filled room, at one in that moment in our grief and anger.

Since Tom Lowenburg and his wife, Judith Lafitte, opened Octavia Books in 2000, the store has been a community resource, an advocate for free speech, and of course, a place to find great books. Here, Lowenburg talks about being included in My Bookstore, Octavia’s role following Katrina, and the challenges of running a business in a shifting industry.

BTW: What does it mean to you to have Octavia profiled by Michael Tisserand in this collection, and to know that major funding for three scholarships to Winter Institute 8 [2] has been donated by the authors who contributed to the book?

Tom Lowenburg: It means a lot on both counts. Michael understands what we, and other independent bookstores, do better than anybody. He takes it personally; he has been a customer here since the beginning. His family shops here, he comes to our events, and we’ve had the privilege to host him at the store when his book, Sugarcane Academy came out. It was great to have somebody that is a part of our bookstore family write about us.

[My Bookstore] is coming out shortly before Winter Institute, which is something that has meant so much to booksellers. It is evidence that there’s so much we have to learn from one another, so it’s great that the creators of the book were able to help us further what we do, to help make us better at it.

BTW:  In addition to the scholarship support, what do you think My Bookstore does for all indie booksellers, whether or not they are featured in the collection?

TL: We’re all independent but we stand together representing what is important and lasting about what we do. As different as we all are, we share similarities in how we treat customers and authors, and demonstrate what bookselling is about. Since it is filled with so many perspectives, an image emerges of what we do as a whole. I think the book explains what we do to the public, and there’s a lot that we booksellers can all learn from looking at the diversity of approaches that we offer.

How better to say it than through the great range of writers who have experienced it, and understand not only how bookstores can change a life, but also that as a whole, we’re here to stay.

BTW: From the excerpt, it’s clear that your store’s role following Katrina was an important one, and it has since evolved. At the time, why did you think it was important to open your doors so quickly after the hurricane? How do you maintain that part of your history without letting it overshadow other aspects of your store?

TL: We thought it was important to re-open quickly because at the time, the future of our whole city was very uncertain. We felt that an independent bookstore is an essential part of a community and we could make a difference by being here. We opened as soon as electricity came back on, which was about five weeks after the storm. Re-opening when we did reminded the community that there was an important quality of life here. Even when there weren’t many other services available, the idea that a bookstore was a place to get together and open up discussions about what had happened and the role we can play.

The experience we’ve gone through will always be a part of our lives and a part of the life of the bookstore, but it’s not something we dwell on. Even then, there were books that helped us understand what was going on but there were so many other stories emerging that we could not ignore. All of them help to explain the world in which we live and help make our lives interesting and meaningful, which is the point of good literature.

The store is always evolving and growing. When a disaster comes, it’s one way you find out what’s important in your life and where you live and it shows ways you can make a difference, and we were glad we could be a part of it.

BTW: You opened Octavia in 2000, when the industry seemed to be shifting and its future was uncertain. What were the biggest challenges? The biggest benefits?

TL: There were probably about five indie bookstores that opened that year. Things were more uncertain then than they are now; now there’s a kind of resurgence of independents. At the time, the online booksellers hadn’t even captured nearly as much of the market, it was mainly the threat of the big-boxes that were popping up, and we didn’t know how we’d fit in. The conventional wisdom was that it was something that couldn’t be done. We only paid so much attention to that. We took the risk and it was something we certainly felt passionate about. We didn’t want to see a world that was possibly emerging that didn’t seem right to us.

I think it gave us an opportunity to define what we were all about. It gave us something to prove at a time when people thought it couldn’t be done. We found that there was overwhelming support from the book-loving public from people that came here. It only became more apparent to us that it was important for us to succeed.

BTW:What advice would you give someone who is thinking of opening or buying an indie bookstore today?

TL: If it’s something you are passionate about, it’s certainly possible to do. One thing that we found is that when one door opens, other opportunities emerge. It’s also a good idea to see what other people are doing and to learn from it. Learn to do it in your own original way while paying attention to what’s going on in the world.

Black Dog & Leventhal is inviting booksellers to sharpen their pencils or turn on their video cameras and express their feelings about “Why My Bookstore Matters” for a chance to win one of three $2,500 scholarships to Winter Institute 8. In a maximum of 1,000 words or no more than two minutes of video or audio, booksellers are asked to share their personal interactions, staff innovations, or the atmosphere that exemplifies what their bookstore brings to the community. Learn more. [2]