Locally Sourced Romance: Astoria Bookshop

Locally Sourced Romance is a new feature that puts the spotlight on fabulous bookstores supporting the romance community! To nominate or suggest a bookstore, please shoot us an email. For a crowd sourced map of bookstores that carry romance, feel free to consult and/or add to our Smart Bitches Buy Romance map! Though be forewarned, it’s undergoing a renovation.

Today, we’re featuring a relatively new bookstore, the Astoria Bookshop in Queens, New York. Please meet Lexi Beach, owner and founder!

Tell us a bit about your bookstore and its awesome inception. Did it come from a lifelong dream? Was the community in dire need of one? 

Lexi: The idea for the store came from the community. I started hearing from local book lovers & publishing professionals that the neighborhood needed a bookstore, so I started looking into the reality of opening one myself. I had been looking for the next step in my own publishing career already, and it was amazing how the universe seemed to roll out the red carpet as soon as I took steps in this direction. Other bookstore owners and local entrepreneurs have been incredibly generous in sharing their insights, and the community has been very welcoming. In the weeks before I opened, I had strangers volunteering to paint the walls & alphabetize books just so the doors could open as soon as possible. And I’m delighted to say that support has remained strong in the year and a half since I opened.

 

Though I’m sure you have a great selection in general, we’d love to hear about your romance section. Do you carry a large breadth of titles? Heavier on one genre or another?

Lexi: I don’t parse out fiction into sub-genres, so romances are mixed in with mysteries, sci-fi, horror, and all the rest. That was a decision dictated by my personal philosophy. My favorite books tend to blend genres, and separating fiction into categories is not only difficult but also cuts down on the serendipity of finding something new to read as you’re browsing the shelves. In terms of the romance I carry, at the moment it’s a mix of some historical (Sarah MacLean, Liz Carlyle, Eloisa James), some erotica (Sylvia Day, Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty series), some contemporary (Danielle Steel, Emily Giffin), and some paranormal (JR Ward, Deborah Harkness).

 

Was it a no-brainer to carry romance? 

Lexi: Yes, absolutely. My store is pretty small, but I knew from the start that I wanted to put a little of everything on the shelves and see what my customers were drawn to. As long as people come in looking for romance novels, I will put them on the shelves. And of course I special order books of every genre all the time.

 

In terms of your stock, how do you determine what to carry? Are some authors automatically stocked? What piques your interest when it comes to what you buy to put on the shelves?

Lexi: I try to tailor my inventory to meet the needs of my customers. In a neighborhood as diverse as Astoria, that means carrying a pretty broad range. But I also let my customers help me curate by listening to what they want. Certain sections of the store were quite small or even non-existent when I opened (I had no dedicated shelf for business books, for example) and due to demand, I’ve expanded them significantly. Watching the patterns of what people ask for has a huge influence on the selection I carry.

I make a point of keeping my own favorite books and authors in stock, but I can only do that as long as they are also books & authors my customers want to read. In terms of new releases, my decisions are influenced by a mix of suggestions from my sales reps, my own preferences & instincts, sales patterns I’ve noticed, and advance buzz in blogs, reviews, social media.

 

Lastly, tell us what you’re reading now. What latest books have blown you away?

Lexi: I’ve been reading some great books that are coming out this spring. A couple of standouts, both being published later this spring:

 How to Start a Fire by Lisa Lutz was fantastic. I know her as a mystery writer (The Spellman Files series) but this is a standalone novel. It’s a story about a complicated friendship between three very complicated women. I love the way she depicts their relationships, with each other and with the men in their lives. The narrative jumps around in time, so even though it isn’t a mystery novel, there is that same feeling that you just have to keep reading to find out what happened.

 

 

 

The Wrong Side of Right by Jenn Marie Thorne is another great one — a YA romance about a teenage girl who learns–along with the rest of the country–that she’s the illegitimate daughter of the current Republican candidate for president. She gets swept up into the campaign trail, but things get slightly more complicated when she develops a flirtation with the incumbent’s son. It’s charming and fun and deals really well with the tumble of emotions 16-year-old Kate experiences as her life is turned upside down.

 

 

You can visit Astoria Bookshop at their website, or, if you’re in the area, they are located at 31-29 31st Street in Astoria, Queens, between Broadway and 31st Avenue. The shop is accessible by the N/Q train.