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!
Today, we’re featuring the Brooklyn location of WORD. Big thanks to Ron Hogan, who tweeted us the suggestion! Please meet Manager Emily!
Tell us a bit about the bookstore and its awesome inception.
Christine Onorati, the owner and founder of WORD, worked in publishing and had a bookstore on Long Island before opening WORD in its Greenpoint location in 2007. The neighborhood had several Polish-language bookstores but seemed ready for a general independent bookstore. And 8 years later, we have seen a lot of change and are firmly ensconced in the neighborhood.
Though I’m sure you have a great selection in general, we’d love to hear about your romance section.
We do have a decent romance selection, especially for our small space and compared to other independent bookstores. We strive to have many genres represented, though we are perhaps slightly heavier on historical romance because of preorder drives and author friends of the store.
Was it an obvious choice to carry romance or was it something that was curated over time?
I think that it started because there were a couple of fans on staff, and then it sort of blossomed from there. We’ve figured out several ways to serve a wider romance community (through signed preorder drives and curated subscription services). After we started doing our WORDs of Love Subscription and newsletter, a romance book club started meeting at the store, and now it is one of our most regularly attended ones.
In terms of your stock, how do you determine what to carry? Are some authors automatically stocked?
There are so many different ways that we decide what to stock. Sarah MacLean curates our WORDS of Love Newsletter and subscription service and we’ve done several signed preorder drives, so she’s someone who we always have in stock, as well as many of the titles she recommends. Eloisa James is another. For our romance section especially, it’s usually a staff member’s interest, an event, or a connection with the author that will bring books into the store.
Lastly, tell us what you’re reading now. What latest books have blown you away?
I recently read The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes ( A | K | G | AB ), Zipper Mouth by Laurie Weeks ( A | K | G | AB | Scribd ), Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel ( A | K | G | AB ), and Neverhome by Laird Hunt ( A | K | G | AB ).
For nonfiction, I loved Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter by Nina MacLaughlin ( A | K | G | AB ), Man Alive by Thomas Page McBee ( A | K | G | AB ), and Born With Teeth by Kate Mulgrew ( A | K | G | AB ). And I haven’t read a lot of romance myself lately, but I enjoyed Scarlet Devices (Steam and Seduction, #2) by Delphine Dryden and I also just attended the Lambda Literary awards and am excited to add some queer romance to my TBR pile.
You can visit WORD at their website or Facebook, or, if you’re in the area, they are located at 126 Franklin St, Brooklyn, NY 11222.
