Best (and only) Bookstore in Palm Springs opens

In the age of ubiquitous digital content, a unique business has opened up at 180 East Tahquitz Canyon Way in Palm Springs. It’s a store that sells only books. Paper books.

Of course, a bookstore is far from a new concept. But the shop, modestly named The Best Bookstore in Palm Springs, is unique in that it’s the city’s only such business.

The store, which first opened its doors on Wednesday, had its first customer within seconds.

Lola Murphy, a part-time Palm Springs resident who splits her time between the desert and Canada, stepped in the door before the clock struck 10:01 a.m.

“I love to read,” Murphy said. “In the mornings I go to the Mizell Center, I hike and then in the afternoons (I) read by the pool. So this is a great delight to have a new bookstore in town.”

As Murphy browsed, Paul Carr, the store’s owner, apologized for the lack of section labels and rushed to put makeshift signs up noting the genres available. “There’s no pressure to buy anything,” he told Murphy, “feel free to take your time and just have a look.”

Carr, a former technology journalist who has never owned a retail business before, is banking that others will share Murphy’s enthusiasm for traditional printed books — and eventually buy them. And statistically speaking, it’s a less risky bet than it might appear.

Print book sales have risen more than 8% for the last two years, according to Publisher’s Weekly and publishing data company NPD Bookscan.

Multiple surveys by Pew Research in recent years have shown that, contrary to popular stereotypes, young adults are actually more likely than older groups to read print books, suggesting a growing future market. In a January Pew report, 68% of adults aged 18-29 reported reading a print book in the last year, compared with 61% of adults 65 and up.

For someone who spent a career covering cutting-edge startups and tech giants in Silicon Valley for publications like Tech Crunch, the choice to open a traditional print bookstore may appear an odd one for Carr. But the store owner said his time writing on the bleeding edge of technology had actually helped boost his confidence in traditional books.

“I’ve had investors in Silicon Valley who have told me that if someone walked into their office today and pitch them on the idea of the book, they would think it was the most technologically advanced thing they’d ever seen,” Carr said. “It never requires charging; anybody can access it. You could bury it in a field and dig it up in 100 years and it still works.”

“And the impact it has on your brain is so magical,” he added. “We just got used to books so I think we just forgot how magical and technologically advanced they really are.”

Carr, who has himself written multiple books, said he first came to the Coachella Valley over a decade ago to find peace and quiet to write away from the bustle of Silicon Valley. As the years went on, he said he began to come to the Coachella Valley with his partner, Sarah Lacy, and her two daughters regularly for vacation before finally purchasing a home in Palm Springs in 2019.

“There just reached a point where, during the pandemic, we went from Palm Springs being a place where we had a second home to a place we decided that we wanted to live,” he said.

Despite his love of the desert, Carr said one thing bothered him and Lacy — also a former journalist and author — about the city almost as soon as they arrived.

“One of the first things I noticed when I moved to Palm Springs was that there’s no bookshop,” Carr said. “I thought, ‘That doesn’t make sense. There must be one; I must just not be finding it.’”

To his dismay, Carr said the closest bookstore he could find was Barnes & Noble in Palm Desert, which he described as “madness for a place where people spend a lot of time sitting by pools reading.”

He said the idea of opening a local bookstore began to appeal to him as a counter to his years immersed in the world of Silicon Valley venture capital funding and high technology.

“In Silicon Valley, there’s a lot of data, there’s a lot of analytics,” he said. “There’s lots of this stuff, but you’re dealing with hundreds of millions of users for it to be successful. Everything just becomes a number on a spreadsheet. I think that it’s really refreshing to be doing something that’s just a bookstore in Palm Springs.”

The business is a family affair, according to Carr, with contributions from Lacy and her two daughters. The store owner said 9-year old Evie and 11-year-old Eli will be helping design the category headers for the bookshelves along with holiday designs for the store’s windows.

Lacy, who currently runs an education platform for women and other underrepresented groups, will help organize events like author talks for the store.

“I’ve interviewed everyone from like Christy Turlington to Al Gore to Margaret Atwood on stage, and I just love bringing (in) authors,” Lacy said. “Authors having conversations with authors and connecting them with their fans is the kind of thing that I’m extra passionate about.”

“We know so many authors and there’s so many who come to L.A. anyway, so we’re hoping we can siphon people over and bring some to Palm Springs,” she added.

Lacy said she has already been in talks with the Palm Springs Library and the Plaza Theatre (when it eventually reopens) to co-host larger events at their spaces, while more “intimate” smaller events will be in the bookstore itself.

Carr said the store also has ambitious plans to launch a book delivery service that can get a physical book to anyone in the Coachella Valley within hours, beating out Amazon for residents and visitors that want literature fast.

“Let’s say you’re staying at the Holiday House hotel or the Ace or somewhere like that and you need something to read,” Carr said. “We should be able to get your book while you’re still sitting by the pool. You order the book from us and before you’ve had your next cocktail, we’ll deliver the book to you beside the pool.”

Carr admitted that the plan for making this lightening-fast delivery process work is still a rough draft.

“At first it’s going to be our family and the people we hire getting on a bicycle — if it’s going to be Ace to the Rowan — or getting in the car or whatever it takes to get that book delivered,” Carr said. “As we do, we’ll learn more about the process and then we can start building processes.”

Carr said the store had not yet hired any staff, meaning he will be extremely busy manning the store from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day over the holiday season. When he does hire workers in the near future, Carr said the store will have two main requirements: Applicants must have retail experience and must love books.

“I want people to come in and talk about books,” he said. “If you don’t love books, you’re not going to have much to talk about.”

Within the store’s first hour of opening, over a dozen customers were already browsing the shelves, including a diverse range of older readers, young couples and a family with two small children occupying the children’s section.

Murphy, the store’s first customer, spent roughly 30 minutes browsing and chatting with the owners about their tastes in books before making a purchase. She said she’ll likely be back to explore the store’s “broad range of fiction” — and perhaps find a new title to read by the pool.

James B. Cutchin covers business in the Coachella Valley. Reach him at james.cutchin@desertsun.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Palm Springs: where is the Best Bookstore?