Kepler’s Books & Magazines in Menlo Park, Calif., is celebrating its 70th anniversary this fall and has pulled out all the stops to mark its ability to succeed in one of the most expensive cities in the U.S. The milestone is even more noteworthy given that 20 years ago Kepler’s closed—though only temporarily.
The festivities kicked off on September 20 with a block party on the plaza in front of the store that drew 700 people. They continued with a roster of events featuring A-list authors, ranging from Katherine Applegate to Mary Roach, while an offsite event on October 1 with Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro drew 900 to the Fox Theatre in Redwood City.
The celebration will conclude on October 29 with an in-store event featuring Joan Baez in conversation with Kimberly Ford. The $200 ticketed event accommodating 115 attendees—which includes receptions before and after the program, plus signed copies of Baez’s 2023 book of drawings, Am I Pretty When I Fly?—sold out in less than a week.
That’s not all. There are table displays scattered around the store of the most notable reads from each of the store’s seven decades; historic photos lining the walls; a stage area in the rear of the retail area displaying yet more photos, along with press clippings from years past about the store. There are even three styles of 70th-anniversary t-shirts for sale.
“We had pent up energy from not being able to celebrate the 65th,” explained Praveen Madan, Kepler’s CEO, or community engagement officer, during PW’s recent visit to the store. “The 65th was going to be in 2020 and we’d just started planning it when the pandemic happened. We were basically shut down. All this energy has been pent up for five years. And we're just in a good place right now as an organization, so we felt that this was a good time for us to remind the community that, hey, it's a big milestone year. We're still here. Let’s have a big party.”
Kepler’s colorful past
Kepler’s was founded by peace activist Roy Kepler on May 14, 1955, in a small and cramped space near the Stanford University campus. From the beginning, the store reflected its founder’s leanings; it was renowned in the 1960s and ‘70s as a gathering place for intellectuals, musicians, activists, and the local literati. The Grateful Dead even performed there once and Baez, who lives in nearby Woodside, is a long-time customer.
The store relocated several times as it expanded and contracted. Kepler's moved into its current 6,500 square-foot space in 1989 in the Menlo Center on the busy El Camino Real, next door to a popular café. Named PW’s Bookstore of the Year in 1994, Kepler’s thrived in the ‘90s but, like so many other indies, was adversely impacted in the aughts by the competition posed by chain stores and online retailers—exacerbated by the cost of doing business in Silicon Valley.
When Kepler’s closed on Aug. 31, 2005 due to a downturn in revenues, the resulting outpouring of support by customers included rallies and demonstrations. By early October, then owner Clark Kepler, Roy Kepler’s son, reopened the store.
In 2012, Madan, then a co-owner of The Booksmith in San Francisco, took over Kepler's from the Kepler family, with the goal of reimagining the business as a sustainable enterprise, as he’d done at Booksmith.
“Kepler’s and I were meant for each other,” recalled Madan, who holds an MBA from the University of Texas and was a Silicon Valley executive before switching to bookselling in 2007. “Kepler’s was ripe for reinvention and for rethinking the future of bookstores and I was hungry for a challenge along those lines, given my background in tech and business.”
Referring to that 2005 closing, Madan maintains that no industry other than bookselling elicits such support from its customers. “I was just fascinated by what it is that people so love independent bookstores,” he said. “But what can a bookstore do to evolve, to stay relevant, and to be able to pay high rents and high costs, and everything else?”
“I was going to work on this business problem for two years,” he noted, “and I was so smart, I was sure I'd figure it out, and then I’d be on my way to my next corporate career. But I'm still here, still figuring it out.”
Mission accomplished?
It’s been 13 years since the overhaul of Kepler’s traditional bookstore business model began with the implementation of the “Kepler's 2020” plan to recreate Kepler’s as both a community-oriented bookstore and a financially sustainable enterprise.
“We’ve made a lot of progress," Madan said. Kepler’s is now divided into the for-profit retailer that sells 35,000 unique titles and a variety of sidelines, and a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, Kepler’s Literary Foundation, that raises funds to support store programming. Currently there are about 65 events annually that each attract at least 100 attendees. This month, the foundation is launching its latest fundraising campaign.
“It allows us to take out the cost of doing events,” Madan told PW. “When we looked at who are we competing with in the Bay Area to get the best authors, they’re all nonprofit organizations doing top-notch literary programming, and they raise a lot of money to do that. They have nice facilities. Their staffs are very well paid, much better than booksellers. Why would we try to do [programming] on the strength of just book sales when that [nonprofit] model seems to be more superior?”
Madan is adamant that the traditional bookselling business model simply does not work anymore, especially in high-rent areas like Silicon Valley, pointing to Books Inc.’s recent bankruptcy as proof.
“We see the future of bookselling as having a strong nonprofit as part of the bookstore, or the way to the bookstore,” he said. “This allows the overall organization to be much more community centered, community funded, and community supported.”
In fact, Madan added, there is discussion about whether to make Kepler’s entirely nonprofit, as the foundation can only support programming; the funds raised cannot be used for inventory, rent, or wages for 17 full and part-time employees—who, Madan stressed, embody the primary metric of what constitutes a successful independent bookstore. The foundation employs another four.
Sustainable bookselling
Noting that 35% of sales goes towards employee wages and benefits (the national average for ABA member bookstores is 25%), Madan said that the success of any indie bookstore lies in its booksellers. “Everything comes down to people,” Madan pointed out. “Everything we do, the displays, the events, everything—is done by people. It's not some tech innovation, some business model innovation; it all comes down to having really good people.”
Emphasizing the importance of employee retention, Madan said that Kepler’s prioritizes that, to the tune of paying a $20/hour starting wage for booksellers, up from $9 in 2012. “The more we invest in our staff, the better quality employees we’ll have,” he said. “The longer they stay, the better job they will do. The name of the game is, pay your staff so they can afford to work in this business, they can have real careers, and it's not just something kids do between college and grad school. People are the backbone of this business. You want career booksellers.”
Kepler’s is so committed to its booksellers, that it has adopted a restaurant industry practice to further boost their wages. Like many eateries in the Bay Area have done, three years ago Kepler’s imposed a 3% “living wage” surcharge on purchases; the money goes towards employee compensation and benefits. Madan said customers have been overwhelmingly supportive of this initiative.
“We’re not just an independent bookstore—we’re a community center, there to serve the community,” Madan said. “It's a public good, just like the library, public radio, or public television. Independent bookstores are in the same category. People see us as an organization that they want to support because it's a public benefit.”
