It has been a long time since a funeral was held at 8540 Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood. It used to be the home of the Cunningham & O’Connor Mortuary. It was where services were held for such Hollywood legends as Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Bing Crosby and Spencer Tracy.
Tomorrow something else is being laid to rest. The legendary Heritage Book Shop. After 44 years in the book business, the last 25 of which were at the old funeral home on Melrose, Ben and Lou Weinstein are cashing out.
It doesn’t matter if the closure is related to Lou getting tired of traveling and wanting to retire or that they were offered a deal they couldn’t refuse for the building that housed the book shop or if the changing face of the book trade played a part.
The fact is “the best rare bookstore on the planet,” as Steve Duin of the Oregonian calls it, is closing. There have to be consequences.
The antiquarian book trade is much more interdependent than the new book trade. In many instances sales to your fellow booksellers far exceed sales to the public. New bookstores function in a much more isolated manner. For the most part, they are selling the same books in different locations with limited interaction.
In my previous post, When You Lose Your Heritage, written back in March when word first came of Heritage closing I talked about how many millions of dollars they spend within the trade and that “anyway you cut it it is a net loss for the trade.”
Of course those Hollywood types will still be buying books and other booksellers will step up to fill the hole but the money flow will be different and that will effect a fair number of booksellers.
For the Weinstein’s we wish them nothing but the best. They deserve it and they earned it but
their departure has upset the equilibrium of the book trade and where it will settle is anybody’s guess.
Edward Wyatt’s article in the NYT Rare Books, Rare Brothers. Rare Chance to Profit. Closed
The article also contains some nice images of the shop.
LA Times story by Scott Timberg A rare treasure will soon be extinct
Scott Brown’s piece at Fine Books Blog on a new bookselling venture that includes some former Heritage employees
Photo by Stephanie Diani for the New York Times
Nigle Burkwood’s piece over at Bookride on Celebrity Book Collectors