Courtesy Geronimo's Books
As any local bibliophile will likely tell you, Santa Fe’s a bit spoiled in the bookstore department. But even as our city enjoyed various retail options offering pieces of a page-based puzzle, Midtown and the Southside kind of languished for a number of years with few options. Yes, Book Mountain was formerly down there, but if you headed farther south, the options dried up. Two years ago, however, Santa Fe business/life partners Phil Geronimo and Lauren Ayer—themselves longtime bookstore workers—opened their secondhand shop Geronimo’s Books just off Cerillos Road (3018 Cielo Court Ste. D, (505) 467-8315). The shop has since become a haven for used words, a nice little trade-in program and readings from wordsmiths near and far, including one from Geronimo himself alongside former Texas poet Laureate Cyrus Cassells (4 pm Saturday, Sept. 13. Free). To mark the occasion, we spoke with Geronimo about the business, customer response and the power of poetry. This interview has been edited for clarity and concision. (Alex De Vore)
Outwardly it seems like you focus on a lot of poetry and poetry readings through the shop. Can you speak to why that is?
Because [poets are] the most available authors in Santa Fe and that I myself am a poet, so is Lauren, so we’re a community, really, that’s what it’s all about—the community. As I get more non-poets...I plan on doing more of those, too. I was doing readings at op.cit. books, setting up chairs at Collected Works, I met a lot of these people. Our poetry section is one of the best in Santa Fe, if not the best. When we go hit the booksales, we know what we’re looking for as far as names. And we have a really banging consignment business where people bring us their books, and I think we’ve done a good job in representing their books and selling them. I think we’ve got some good nonfiction, too. Not all of the consignment books are self-published. We have some pretty high-end authors in Santa Fe, and they get picked up by a small press and bring their books in.
Obviously there’s a big chain bookstore down on that side of town now, but I’m curious about community response to your indie/used/likely more affordable store. Are patrons pleased?
I like to think they are, and since we’re still new and only sell used—other than consignment—we haven’t hit the new book niche yet. In an odd sort of way Barnes & Noble is good for us, because our customers go and get the new books and then bring them to us and we can resell them. I went in there, too, and there aren’t any sales, so I think people like us for that, too. Plus, all the people in the mom and pop bookstore communities know their books. That’s why we’re so strong at what we do. The owner at op.cit. is a wiz when it comes to books.
We’ve built a pretty small but decent clientele. If they’re looking for a book, we get their name and number and keep an eye out. Out-of-print books will be hard for them to find, but if we come across it, we’ll look for that book for you. That was my thing when I went to Barnes & Noble—why would you go there and support a corporation when you can go to Amazon and get it cheaper? People know me from other bookstores and they know we know books. We don’t buy books, but we take them in for trade. We did this because we have a passion for books and always wanted to have a bookstore.
Now that you’ve hit the two-year point, have you learned anything notable? What might you tell yourself two years ago when you were first opening Geronimo’s Books?
Make sure you’re keeping an eye on your bookkeeping better. The business end was definitely a weakness for me, but the books and the outreach and the PR was the easy thing for me. You are running a business, so you’ve got to know the business aspect.
If you literally get people through the front door...another thing about the poetry…even though we’re doing Santa Fe Taos, Albuquerque poets, these are niches for different audiences, so try to get a cross-section. Now I’m getting hookups from my Facebook because I have 1,000 author friends. In November I’ll have Justin Hamm and Michelle Otero, the former poet laureate of Albuquerque. I have one in April—Luke Johnson from Santa Cruz and former New Mexico poet laureate Lauren Camp for Poetry Month.
Location is kind of a give-and-take. Granted, it would have been good to get a better location, but I would have been paying double the rent. I went a little more with the dream and little less paying attention to location, but we have great landlords. One of our major clients is tourists, surprisingly, but we are the only bookstore on this side of town besides Barnes & Noble, and there are people all over the country who’d rather support a bookshop than a big chain.
