Building the Modern Bookstore
The COOP featured in Publishers Weekly
The COOP featured in Publishers Weekly: Building the Modern Bookstore
We're excited to share that Jodi Goldstein, CEO of the Harvard Cooperative Society, was recently featured in Publishers Weekly, one of the most respected voices in the book industry. Here are highlights from the feature:
From the innovation lab to the bookstore floor
When Jodi was at the Harvard Innovation Labs, she spent years bringing together students from schools who all had different expertise and perspectives. In designing for cross-disciplinary innovation, she led the Harvard Innovation Labs in creating something greater than the sum of its parts.
Building community runs through everything The COOP is doing now. Over the last two years, for example, The COOP has held author events designed to bring writers into conversation with Harvard and MIT researchers, hosted a book club rooted in the broader Cambridge community, and reinvigorated a children's story hour that invites families into a space that's been serving students since 1882.
Curation as a philosophy
In the interview, Jodi describes curation as central to what The COOP does. By curation, Jodi means more than selecting which books to put on display. Instead, it’s asking: what conversation does this book want to start? Who should be in the room? How do we create an experience people carry with them? Curation of ideas, experiences, and people is what separates a bookstore that endures from one that merely survives.
A moment, and a responsibility
One of the most striking details in the PW piece: Cambridge once had more than 50 bookstores. Now there's a handful. The COOP sits in a unique position, anchored in two world-class universities embedded in a city hungry for the kind of in-person, intellectually alive experience that bookstores offer at their best.
"There's this yearning for a simpler time," Jodi told PW, "and for in-person gatherings, and for that tactile experience of bookstores." We believe it, and we're building for it.
Authors interested in hosting a book talk or launch at the Coop can reach us at press@thecoop.com.