Last week it was announced that the Reading Room at Mandalay Bay, the last independent bookstore in Las Vegas, was closing its doors. This week word comes that Bauman Rare Books, one of the preeminent antiquarian booksellers, is opening a store at Shoppes at the Palazzo. The Palazzo is home to some of the world’s premier luxury brands and Bauman is hoping to fit right in.
Those of you who read the Book Review section of the Sunday New York Times are familiar with Bauman’s frequent back page ad offering various hi-spots of collectible books.
They might be the only bookseller with a PR firm on the payroll and it seems to be working. They are clearly positioning themselves as the dominant luxury brand in the rare book market. With their home store in Philadelphia, their showroom on Madison Avenue in New York and now the shop in Vegas Bauman seems confident that the antiquarian market will continue to grow and prosper. Bauman says that rare book collecting “is a conservative market that affords exceptional value. For the price of a painting you can have a library.”
The Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA) should take heed and like Bauman work on positioning themselves as the place where many of the best books in the world live.
Bauman press release on the Vegas opening.
Las Vegas Sun article: “Bookstores aren’t our thing, but Vegas has literary life”