40 years of Books & Books: How a beloved bookstore put Miami on the literary map
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40 Years of Books & Books
How Mitchell Kaplan’s dream survived Amazon, e-books and the pandemic — and made the literary world pay attention to Miami.
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40 years of Books & Books: How a beloved bookstore put Miami on the literary map
From books to bright lights: How Miami’s favorite bookstore owner got into the movie biz
Want to understand Miami? Read these 10 books, says Mitchell Kaplan of Books & Books
Books & Books celebrates its 40th year anniversary in Miami
The first thing you see when you step through the gate of one of Miami’s most magical spots isn’t the books.
You’ll see readers browsing the magazine racks or sitting at the small bar, turning pages and sipping a Sauvignon Blanc. Groups of friends laughing at a table in the courtyard over a meal. Solitary writers frowning at their laptops, trying to figure out how to get their masterpieces on the shelves. If it’s the weekend, you may hear music from a makeshift stage.
The books lie in wait through the doors on either side of the courtyard. The shelves are stuffed with publications, offering brave new worlds for any sort of reader, from the connoisseur of classics to the thrill-seeker who craves a jolt from the latest thriller.
And yet, Books & Books, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, is more than a beloved institution that has served the Miami community for decades. It’s a wellspring from which good things blossom: Seven stores. A publishing imprint and a podcast. A production company that adapts books for film and TV.
The store also nurtured scores of successful South Florida authors who are, as bestselling writer Brad Meltzer says, “so loyal we’d put our bodies on the train tracks” for the book lover who made all of this possible, Mitchell Kaplan.
A former English teacher at Southridge High School, Kaplan co-founded the Miami Book Fair with former Miami Dade College president Eduardo Padron (Kaplan calls the fair “Miami Dade College’s gift to the community”). He has served as president of the American Booksellers Association, the trade group for independent bookstores, and on the board of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. He earned the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community from the National Book Awards in 2011.
His lifelong dream of owning a bookstore is one of the best things to ever happen to Miami.
A Miami Beach High graduate who jokes about his past as a “know-nothing English major,” Kaplan marvels to think back on what these past 40 years have brought.
“I had no idea what road I was taking,” he says. “I have to say I feel often like the luckiest guy in the world because I chose a path that has suited me so wonderfully.”
‘We never underestimated Miami’
In 1982, nobody thought of Miami as a cultural center. A cocaine and crime center, maybe, but a literary hub? Never.
But Kaplan, who had returned to Miami after getting his English degree at the University of Colorado and leaving Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C., thought it was a good time to open a bookstore. He was teaching at Southridge High and working part-time at local chain bookstore B Dalton — “so I could learn what book selling was like,” he says — when he opened Books & Books at its first location on the corner of Aragon Avenue and Salzedo Street in Coral Gables.
The space was so small — about 500 square feet — that a popular local poetry night had to be staged in shifts. One group would come in and read poems to an audience, which would then have to leave so a new group could squeeze in.
The store’s opening coincided with the advent of national book tours, but, perhaps imagining the mean streets of Coral Gables as something out of “Scarface,” New York publishers weren’t sending many writers to Miami. Kaplan knew this was a mistake.
“Miami was thought of as a place where not much serious stuff happened,” he says. “I knew different because I sold books, and I saw people were buying books as sophisticated as you’d find in New York or L.A. I’ve always had a very hopeful sense of Miami and always flew against that sense of Miami as being superficial and not serious. So the readings we did at the store and at the Miami Book Fair, we made sure we never underestimated Miami as a cultural place.”
The first author to appear was actor John Houseman of “The Paper Chase,” who had published a memoir. The second was acclaimed Jewish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, who had just won a Nobel Prize, released a collection of stories and had an apartment in Surfside.
“We were so swamped and overwhelmed I had to bring 150 books to his apartment for him to sign,” Kaplan remembers.
Books & Books moved into its current Gables location in 2000, with more space, an open courtyard and a café, with more room for hosting touring authors (you can see some of them in photos on the café’s wall). But locals remember the original store fondly.
Cuban-American poet Richard Blanco, who grew up in Westchester and went on to be named President Barack Obama’s second inaugural poet and Miami-Dade County’s first poet laureate, had his first book launch at the original store.
“It was my poetry quinceañera,” he said. “I used to go to the store with the dream of reading there one day, and it came true! I’ve had many events with the store through the years, and they bend over backwards to help South Florida artists. It’s beyond a bookstore. It’s a literary scene, and Mitchell put it on an international map.”
‘An advocate for the community’
Supporting local authors, especially in their literary infancy, is one of Kaplan’s passions.
When Brad Meltzer, who grew up in South Florida, published his first novel “The Tenth Justice” in 1997, he went to a local chain and asked if the store would host a signing for him.
“They said no. Mitchell said yes,” he said. “Every time I’ve been on tour, the tour has a stop at Books & Books. “
That wasn’t the first “yes” that made a difference. Meltzer, who went on to write dozens of bestsellers and created the “Decoded” series for The History Channel, asked his publisher to create a subscription service for his kids’ series “Ordinary People Change the World,” which profiles famous people such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malala Yousafzai, Anne Frank, Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Armstrong.
The response? “We don’t do that.” Kaplan’s response? “Let’s try it.” The service, which allows buyers to choose a subscription of two or four books each month, can be found at ordinarypeoplechangetheworld.com. Meltzer says the service has helped the series sell more than five million books.
When horror writer Tananarive Due was a sophomore in Kaplan’s class at Southridge High, she wrote a 200-page novel by hand and asked Kaplan to read it. He took the request seriously and critiqued the manuscript.
“I don’t remember what it was about,” she admits. “But one of his comments was he didn’t like the mother of my protagonist. It was tough to take the criticism at first, then I realized ‘Wait, he’s talking about her like she’s a real person!’ I was so excited he was taking the characterization seriously. . . . He was a fantastic teacher, and it was a peak experience for me to be in his class.”
Due yearned to someday see a book with her name on the cover in every Books & Books window, and the dream came true in 1996, when she published her first novel “The Between.” Now, she’s working with Kaplan’s production company The Mazur Kaplan Company on developing her upcoming novel “The Reformatory” for a TV series.
For Alex Segura, author of the Pete Fernandez detective series set in Miami and “Secret Identity,” a mystery set in the world of comics, growing up in Miami meant getting a chance to see authors in person at Books & Books. Wandering the shelves and finding new writers would eventually steer him toward a writing career. He launched his first novel, “Silent City,” at the new Gables store in 2013.
“For me, hoping to be a writer, to have that nexus point interacting with people interested in reading and books and interacting with writers was amazing,” he said. “Even now, not living in Miami, I always have that support. Mitchell is such an advocate for the community.“
Diversity matters
Part of advocating for the Miami community is putting an emphasis on diversity, which has long been part of the Books & Books DNA. When the Miami Book Fair began in 1984, Kaplan and the fair staff created a robust Spanish language program and a Caribbean program, featuring works from small presses in hopes of introducing readers to lesser-known voices. Spanish-language and events in Creole also thrive at the Gables Books & Books store.
As a Miami native, Kaplan wanted to find ways to amplify the voices that weren’t always heard in the literary world.
“To learn about other kinds of lives, that to me is the beauty of what fiction ought to be,” he said. “That’s one of the things that’s so offensive about the book banning attempts. They’re attempts to shut that down and the opposite of what a reader should want.”
Haitian-born writer Edwidge Danticat, whose story collection “Everything Inside” won the National Book Critics Circle award in 2020, said she first entered Books & Books in 1991, when she was a student at Brown University and attended a Caribbean Writer’s Institute at University of Miami. The week-long event culminated with a reading at the original store. She launched her first novel “Breath, Eyes, Memory” there in 1994 and frequently returns to talk about her books, introduce other authors and for programs in Creole.
“Books & Books and Mitchell have always tried to reflect the community that they’re a part of,” she says. “Mitchell has always offered that space. Sometimes if you have a bookstore, you see it as a thing you own, but Mitchell has always run Books & Books as a community center. The fact that he’s there and is inclusive is a great blessing.”
Les Standiford, director and founder of the creative writing program at Florida International University and author of 25 books, also credits Kaplan, a longtime friend, with playing an important role in supporting diversity.
“There’s an event if not two or three at the Gables store every night, and they engage the widest possible audiences: the LGBTQ audience, the Latino audience, mystery lovers, the John Updike descendants — they all come there,” Standiford said. “He has created the temple of the book in Miami.”
Staying alive
Potential landmines could have derailed the bookstore over the last 40 years. The current Gables location opened a year before 9/11, followed several years later by the 2008 recession. Big box stores like Barnes & Noble and Borders were undercutting book prices and dooming indie book stores. Amazon loomed, and e-books were poised to deliver a death blow.
But the death blow never came. E-books have turned out to be a supplement, not a replacement, for physical books. Amazon and the recession did demolish some chain stores and indies and still threatens booksellers’ livelihoods. But Books & Books survived. After opening a store on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach in 1989, Kaplan went on to open stores in Bal Harbour, Coconut Grove, Pinecrest and downtown Miami. There’s also a franchise at the Miami International Airport and a branded store with the The Studios at Key West, where you might find author Judy Blume behind the counter.
The strength of the brand prompted the owners of the Bal Harbour Shops to ask Kaplan to open a branch there; similarly, the owners of the Grove property wanted Kaplan on the Main Highway there, too.
Matthew Lazenby, whose family founded the Bal Harbour Shops, said Books & Books joining the upscale mall in 2009 has been a good fit.
“We have always believed in the transformative power of books to delight and enrich our guests’ experience and reinforce their emotional connection to the Shops,” he wrote in an email. “Mitchell Kaplan cares about and is plugged into his community in ways few others could be.”
The 2020 COVID pandemic, of course, presented new problems. The stores had to close, and in June 2020 Kaplan made the tough decision to close the Miami Beach store due to rising rents. All the other stores reopened except for the Adrienne Arsht Center location in downtown Miami, which Kaplan plans to reopen sometime this summer.
Author events at the stores and the book fair had to be held exclusively online, but there was no drop-off in quality, said Patricia Engel, an associate professor at University of Miami and author of four books, including “Infinite Country,” which was released in 2021.
“Books & Books put the same care into virtual events as it did with in-person events,” Engel said. “That’s something to admire. The store put the same effort into sustaining the community during the pandemic, doing as much as they could to create engagement when everyone was staying at home. I really appreciated how they evolved and showed an ability to keep the community together.”
Kaplan, who said PPP loans helped Books & Books in 2020 and praises his staff for their ability to pivot to new ways of doing business, says that sales have seen a bump over 2019 because customers reconsidered their loyalties.
“People took stock of where they were shopping and what kinds of stores they were supporting, and they saw so many small businesses go out of business they understood if they were to keep them alive, they’d have to patronize them,” he said. “I love the fact I’ve been seeing more and more young people coming into the store and using the store and making the store feel like their own. The pandemic taught us that physical spaces and gathering and being able to meet your neighbors and be someplace outside of your home or work is essential to who we are as people. And Books & Books is exactly that kind of place.”
And what encourages such loyal customers?
“Mitchell is the difference,” Standiford said. “He combined a bookstore with this charismatic personality that he had. That’s what has made all the difference.”
To be continued
The brand continues to expand. Kaplan created an imprint, Books & Books Press, which took a hiatus during the pandemic but plans to publish Mark Kurlansky’s latest nonfiction work, “The Importance of Not Being Ernest,” an offbeat biography of Ernest Hemingway, at the end of May.
Kaplan also started a weekly podcast in 2018 on which he interviews writers and other book lovers, an outlet for the sheer enjoyment he gets talking about books (“I’ve always found writers to be my heroes,” he says).
At 67, Kaplan, who lives with his wife Rachelle, a real estate agent, in Miami, has earned some rest and relaxation (with a good book in hand, of course). His three children — Anya, Daniel and Jonah — are adults. But there are things to do. He’s working with Jonah to reinvigorate the Gables café. The Grove store may be opening a café, too, and then there’s the Arsht store reopening. And sometime this fall, most likely in October, Books & Books will host an anniversary party.
Kaplan can’t seem to pull himself away from books or the people who love them as much as he does.
Ask him what books mean to him, and you’ll stop him cold. After all, we don’t think much about the air we breathe. We just know we need it to live.
“For me, books represent life,” he says finally. “Books represent everything that I’ve been about since I was about 18. . . . I don’t know what my life would be like without books.”
This story was originally published May 11, 2022 at 6:00 AM.