Written By: Stacey Ebert
Interviewee: John Evans
I’ve always loved bookstores. I, like I imagine so many of you reading this, can spend hours upon hours wandering the aisles, escaping in the front and back covers, taking in the feel of the spine and the weight of the book in my hand, and transporting into the worlds of all sorts of unknown and familiar. Within minutes of venturing inside the welcoming atmosphere of that creative space, flow state happens – hours tick by without any notice of the world outside as the one inside is filled with warm invitation and wildly wonderful imagination.
In this new series, we wander the wiles of bookstores, interview those who make their magic happen, and discover more about the inner workings of this wonderful world and all who make it come alive. First up, we chat with John Evans from one of our local establishments, Camino Books – For the Road Ahead in Del Mar.
Please tell us the origin story of Camino Books:
My wife, Alison Reid, and I decided to open a bookstore in the late 1980s. We wanted it to be light, playful, engaged; a good place to work; an enticing book selection; and a hub for people looking for the human in an inclusive, welcoming place, in the form of books, magazines and cards. One thing led to another from 1989 to the present: opening 5 stores in California from Oakland to San Diego, with a name change last year, keeping solely our Camino Books: For the Road Ahead, store now in the Del Mar Plaza in Del Mar.
What experience do you hope people have when entering or working with Camino Books?:
To be drawn in by the appreciation of books and bookstores; smell the books; take a deep breath and relax into the experience — physical, emotional, imaginal, intellectual, social, cultural, historical –that a bookstore provides; and to feel a sense of sanctuary, social warmth, cultural breadth, imaginative possibility.
What advice can you give aspiring writers on their potential publishing journey?:
Find an agent, who then should find an editor, who has the sensibility to celebrate and work hard for the book you’ve created, the values and intention behind your writing, and the aesthetics you need to present the tone and flavor of your work.
What about the art of books and bookselling keeps you coming back to the world of writers and readers?:
I am endlessly fascinated by creative production of any kind and most importantly the will to make it and the astonishing magic and mystery of its full achievement in works of art. Books are the artform where I feel that the fullest.
In your opinion, within the past decade, how have the new and various methods of publishing changed the publication industry?:
There has been a multiplication of formats; a fearful consolidation of publishers; technological innovations, for good and ill; and an increasing takeover of all cultural production by financial capitalism. The technologies have made possible the massive increase in streaming audio readership (more readers, reading more books, in that format). Financial capitalism has exploited the meaning and cultural substance, changing readers into consumers – and authors into marketers – making choices against their own best interests. Self-publishing has brought great profits to a tiny percentage of people, but expanded the number of books published from say 300 thousand per year in the US, to over a million. Digital distribution has dangled a carrot for authors, luring them into deep and desperate ways to distribute their books beyond their often more meaningful and substantial local or niche audiences. Consolidation appears to be necessary to tackle the increasing cultural power of non-cultural actors (online sellers, hedge funds, etc.), but it isn’t – that is more a matter of green washing corporate greed and power.
The biggest positive recent changes have been a surge in new independent booksellers; a growing dis-ease with the corporate distortions of culture in the service of greed and power; an increase in small presses publishing in the age-old best spirit of cultural production and distribution; and the hunger of readers who, having grown-up with devices have a clearer eye toward the lacks to be found there, than those who still believe technology is progress. Lastly, AI has important applications where calculating power and speed is necessary – science, medicine, aspects of business, technology – but not for cultural uses, except in the most instrumental of ways. Bringing us back to the importance of the author’s individual imagination; the cultural and communal activity of book production and distribution; and the importance of the perspective that the reader’s imagination is not to be engineered, no matter how much the major corporate, technological, technocratic, and politics forces may want that to be so.
What’s your favorite part about being a member of the Camino Books family?:
Bookselling is a family, along with the less obviously bookselling people in publishing: the agents, editors, publishers, publicists, booksellers and most importantly sales reps. We are all in this together with the authors, whose contributions to ongoing cultural production make it all possible and the readers who are what all of this is for. It’s a great, expansive community of like-minded people (for the most part), with fundamentally similar values.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?:
Authors work, so often, alone. Publishing, bookselling, and bookstores join in a communal activity. The authors who do the best are those who recognize the vital circular chain of this ecosystem: how dependent they are on the bookselling that has brought them the books that helped them to become the authors they are. Then, to recognize that their books should be cared for and placed in the hands of readers, not through the uncaring machinery of large online retailers, or even large chains, who gradually or severely strip the books of their human value and deprive the reader (who should think similarly) of the communal experience central to the future of what makes culture and society essential, and meaningful.
