Libro.fm Podcast – Episode 20: “Interview with Danny Caine”

On today’s episode, we sit down with Danny Caine, part owner of the Raven Book Store, poet, and author. We discuss his books, How to Protect Bookstores and Why and How to Resist Amazon and Why, what running a bookstore is like, the need for strong local communities, and why he considers himself a really good grocery shopper.

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About our guest

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Audiobooks by Danny Caine

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Audiobooks we discussed

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Full transcription

Karen Farmer:

Hi, welcome to the Libro.fm Podcast, the monthly series where we talk to authors, narrators, booksellers, and more. I’m Karen.

Craig Silva:

And I’m Craig. On today’s episode, we spoke with Danny Caine, who is the owner of the Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kansas, and is also a poet and author of How to Resist Amazon and Why, and the forthcoming How to Protect Bookstores and Why, which comes out tomorrow at the time of recording, on September 19th.

Karen Farmer:

Danny has been a long time friend and supporter of Libro.fm. I think the first time I came across his name actually was in his book How to Resist Amazon and Why, was flipping through it, saw mentions to Libro.fm. So it’s really cool now to have met him not just on the podcast, but to meet him in person at the Children’s Institute in Milwaukee. I just couldn’t resist. I’m like, “Danny, you’re the perfect guest for the podcast. You have to join us.”

Craig Silva:

You just couldn’t resist and why? No, Danny is amazing. Meeting him in person was awesome. I think that’s how this podcast episode was kind of born. We were like, “Hey, Danny, nice to meet you. What should doing soon? Do you want to be on our podcast?” And he was very gracious to say yes and with his time, and I really enjoyed this interview.

Karen Farmer:

And something really exciting, I don’t think this is mentioned in the episode, but for the audiobook of his new book, How to Protect Bookstores and Why, this podcast interview is actually going to be included at the end, so very cool little crossover that we’ve done here.

Craig Silva:

Very nerve wracking, I think is what you meant to say.

Karen Farmer:

That too.

Craig Silva:

It’ll live on forever.

Karen Farmer:

I’m losing sleep over it.

Craig Silva:

Yes. So without further ado, should we let the podcast roll and as always, we will be here at the end of the episode to banter about books, tease future episodes, et cetera.

Karen Farmer:

Perfect, let’s do it.

Craig Silva:

Welcome to the podcast, Danny. It’s great to see you again.

Danny Caine:

Likewise, I’m happy to be here.

Karen Farmer:

Awesome. Yeah, we’ve been talking about this for a while now. We all got to hang out in Milwaukee at Children’s Institute, and I think I mentioned to you, Danny, when we start the podcast, we always say, “It’s for authors, narrators, booksellers and more.” And I was like, “You’re all of them, so you are our perfect guest. We must have you on this.”

Danny Caine:

Although I’ve only done the narrator thing once. We’ll see. But yeah, I guess that’s true.

Craig Silva:

We’re going to kill two Ravens with one stone. Thanks. I’ll edit that out promptly.

Karen Farmer:

Absolutely not. So I kind of spoiled it with a brief introduction to what you do, but for our listeners, can you give us an intro to yourself and all the things you’re up to in the bookish world?

Danny Caine:

Oh, sure. Yeah. Well, my name is Danny Caine. I suppose. My main day job is a part owner of the Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kansas where I work on scheduling and ordering. I’m on the ordering team, on the events team, and I do all of the bill paying and HR stuff. I’m also an author, a poet. I’ve put out four poetry collections and a book called How to Resist Amazon and Why, which is a nonfiction book and its follow-up is coming imminently. It’s called How to Protect Bookstores and Why, it’s out this fall. Both of those are from Microcosm Publishing and yeah, Libro helped me put together an audiobook of How to Resist Amazon and Why, which I recorded in a very interesting studio that was essentially a barn.

It was a fun story, but it was like someone who knew someone from Kansas Public Radio. He was like, “Oh yeah, Mike has a studio, you can go out there” and it was in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, in the middle of the country. It was like this cinder black building that housed a giant guitar in miscellaneous collection, and I was sitting on a beat up couch with his barn cats crawling all over me just reading my book.

Karen Farmer:

Wow.

Danny Caine:

Yeah, it was pretty amazing. The studio didn’t have a bathroom in it, so it’s like I was drinking a lot of water and every time I took it… Because I’m not used to talking for four hours straight or whatever, and every time I had to take a… He’s just like, “Oh, just go out back.” I’m sure that’s what all audiobook studios look like. He was great, I’m saying this not to complain because it was a hugely memorable experience and he was a great host, but it was definitely an adventurous day or two when I recorded that book.

Craig Silva:

Peeing in the Backyard is important to the audiobook process I hear.

Karen Farmer:

Pretty standard. Pretty standard.

Craig Silva:

That’s what the last narrator said too, for sure.

Danny Caine:

Yeah. Boy, we’re four minutes into this podcast and we’ve already gone some places, huh? That was just my intro.

Karen Farmer:

Oh, just you wait, Danny. Awesome. Well, we have tons of questions for you. We’re definitely going to want to hear more about this audiobook experience, but to kick us off, we wanted to talk a little bit more about Raven Book Store, which I know is in Lawrence, Kansas. You’re a part owner there. It’s entirely employee owned. I loved reading about this bookstore online. Your mission statement is really beautiful. So in your own words, we would love for you to just talk a little bit more about what the Raven is, what makes it so special, why you love it so much.

Danny Caine:

Sure. The Raven was founded in Lawrence in 1987, so it’s a pretty long time for a bookstore, and since the beginning it’s been really community oriented. I think any bookstore that’s going to succeed has to be really plugged into its community. In the eighties when it started, that meant specializing in mystery and local titles because there were a lot of bookstores in Lawrence and they all had their own specialties. But since then, as the other bookstores have closed, we’ve become kind of the general audience bookstore for new books in Lawrence, and part of that was moving to a new location on a little bit busier part of the street where we’re on. Part of that… And in terms of employee ownership, part of that is just trying to make sure we’re providing good jobs. Both in Lawrence and in the book selling community, especially in the book selling community, it’s really a challenge to build a career or to make a living wage, and we tried a lot of different things to do that, one of which is employee ownership.

So our core leadership team all have ownership stakes in the business and they share decision-making and strategic planning. With me, part of it is we just have a pretty high starting wage as high as we possibly can, and there are countless ways that a bookstore would plug into its community, but that’s kind of where we start is what can we do for the community and how can our role as a bookstore help make Lawrence and America and the book industry a better place? Which sounds really lofty when I say that, but it really does animate us because I do think a bookstore is kind of uniquely suited to be a force for good in the world. Perhaps, I don’t want to say more so than other small businesses, but just in terms of bookstores, I think there are a lot of things a bookstore can do to fight for positive change.

Karen Farmer:

That was the line from your mission statement that I loved. I think it’s the first one where it says, “We believe that bookstores and books may not be able to solve all the world’s problems, but they’re a great place to start.” And you talked a little bit at the beginning about all of the different hats that you wear at the bookstore. What does your day-to-day look like and has that changed over time or what has your life there been?

Danny Caine:

One of the things I love about working at a bookstore is that the days don’t really look the same, which that’s nice for me. I don’t really do that great in a daily routine, but given my weeks do have a rhythm early in the week, I’m really focusing on restock and kind of rebuilding the inventory after weekend sales. Payroll happens twice a month, schedule making happens every two weeks. And then aside from those daily things, I’m always meeting with sales reps because I do front list ordering for adults, and so I’ll have be looking at Edelweiss catalogs and talking to sales reps and putting together our orders for the next season.

Yesterday I had a meeting with our events team in the public library because we’re teaming up with them on a couple events this fall, and so it’s a lot of stuff, and then I always have to try to save time to write too, and I generally do that more in the afternoons and it’s like I’ll kind of blast through Raven stuff in the morning and then find a coffee shop somewhere to go work on whatever writing project I’ve got cooking up, and then five o’clock it’s time to pick up from daycare and it’s like Dad is another hat, it’s perhaps bigger than all of those other things, but I like being busy. It helps me stay interested and motivated.

Karen Farmer:

My last question I want to ask you about Raven is entirely selfish. I love zines, I love reading them, I love making them, and I see that there is a big zine presence on the website for Raven. How did that come to be and what does this look like?

Danny Caine:

Sure. Really early on in this whole Amazon pro-small business journey that we’re on, I had some tweets from the Raven account get really popular, and a friend of mine who runs a bookstore in Cleveland called Mac’s Backs really good friend, texted me and said, “You know, those tweets that are going viral, you should turn them into a broadside or a zine.” I’m like, “Well, that’s a really good idea.” Because it was just in that particular conversation about bookstores and Amazon, it felt like a really good resource to help broaden that conversation and to give stores to have that conversation with their customers because booksellers are really good at having that conversation among themselves. But I was happy to try to make a resource to facilitate that conversation happening with customers.

When I was in grad school, I had started making zines. We had a pretty cool… I was teaching English 101 and 102, and the person who ran the comp program at KU at the time was in a zinester. In the nineties he was in the scene, and so as one of the writing projects for English one-on-one at KU for a couple years was to write a zine and talk about audience and rhetoric and stylistic choices and how to… So it was like as I was prepping those lessons, I learned how to make zines myself, and whenever I would read at a poetry open mic or something, I would just make a zine of my 10 most recent poems and sell a little pile at the book table. It’s like my poetry, my first poetry book took seven years to write. I was well out of grad school by the time I got published, and it’s fun to when you’re out reading to be able to buy dinner or something and plus just to have something to make and design, it was really fun.

So long story short, I had the zine making skills kind of in my back pocket when my friend told me, you should make your tweets into a zine. So I did. It came together really quickly and then that just exploded and made a lot of things possible. One of which is we’ve got kind of an unofficial Raven Zine series where every once in a while while I’ll have time, I’ll put together some kind of a zine for the store. One of them was about the post office when they were threatening to shut that down when they were in big trouble a couple summers ago. Another one, I don’t even remember how it started, I think a customer during the pandemic when we were shut down, they just randomly sent us a recipe and the comments of their online order and it was like, “Thank you so much, Raven, we miss you. Here’s a great chocolate chip cookie recipe.” And I loved that so much.

I was really tickled, and it was a time where we were really lonely. It was just five or six of us in the store processing online orders, and I was also looking for fun stuff to put on social media because that was the only way we could keep in touch. And then I was just like, “Oh my God, look at this. This is hilarious. Everybody, this person sent us a recipe in the order comments.” And I put it on Twitter, and then of course everybody started sending us recipes, which is the best. And then we had 40 or 50 of them, and so we just made a cookbook that was one of our Raven zines, was we turned all the recipes from the comments into a little cookbook. And so yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve made a zine, but we do have maybe five or six in-house zines that we’ve made throughout my time there, and it’s just a fun project.

Oh, the best one though, my favorite is one of our cats fell asleep on the keyboard during the wintertime. It’s really cold, and so they fell asleep on one of the cash registers, and one of my coworkers had the brilliant presence of mind to open up a Word document while he was asleep on the keyboard and it just filled up with text. This is me thinking as a former English grad student, but I was like, “This is a really interesting postmodern meta textual experiment.”

It was 50 pages long before he got up, and so we published it as a novel, just this chunk illegible text, and I put together a really high-minded introduction talking about the animal authored text and the post-human and all this stuff. It was hilarious. And we also did an author event with him and I was sitting there on Crowdcast, I had little pieces of Turkey that I was feeding him to keep him on camera, and I was feeding him all these really pretentious questions. That was a lot of fun. That was great. We did get one order though, someone ordered 10 and then returned it and was like, “This is not what I thought it was going to be. I was promised a novel by a cat.”

Craig Silva:

That’s exactly what you got.

Danny Caine:

Right. So yeah, the zine, it’s just fun. It’s one of the ways that the bookstore can show its voice and its personality.

Karen Farmer:

I love it. Do you have a photocopier in the bookstore? Where are you photocopying these?

Danny Caine:

No, we printed them-

Karen Farmer:

[inaudible 00:13:43]

Danny Caine:

… For a while… I know it feels a little anti-punk to do that. For a long time when the Amazon zine came out, I was like, I have to photocopy these and staple these myself. That’s authentic. And then word got out and I was just going through hundreds and hundreds of orders and it was like, “I need my social life back. I’m spending every afternoon at Kinko’s and every night at the dining room table with my long arm stapler.”

Karen Farmer:

Can’t staple anymore.

Danny Caine:

Right.

Craig Silva:

Well, speaking of the Amazon zine, that is our next question, but before we get to that, I want to know, did you make those cookies and were they delicious?

Danny Caine:

Oh, yeah. I’m not the baker on staff, but I’m pretty sure we have made some of this stuff from the recipe.

Craig Silva:

Nice.

Danny Caine:

There’s some really interesting things in there.

Craig Silva:

That’s amazing. So How to Resist Amazon and Why, before we jump into the questions about this, first off, just want to say thank you for partnering with Libro over the past forever, for a while, but especially over the past week for listeners who may not know, we made the audiobook version of How to Resist Amazon and Why free for all listeners during the Prime Day event. So thanks for doing that with us. That was awesome.

Danny Caine:

It was your idea. I loved it. It was a lot of fun and it was really amazing just to get tagged in so many social media posts as people were talking about this and making their arguments about supporting small businesses. It was a dream come true, so it was really cool.

Craig Silva:

Awesome, for us too for sure. So you kind of started talking about this a little bit, but for people that may not know or have not read this, can you just tell us what this is and how you got started with it?

Danny Caine:

Yeah, well that’s the story of the tweets turning into the zine, and then we kind of left off with me overwhelmed with the stapler. And then I got a message from Microcosm Publishing from Joe who runs Microcosm just asking, and I had already known Microcosm… They stopped selling directly to Amazon. They’re one of the very few publishers, if not the only… The only publisher, their size certainly who has taken a stand and they’re like, “We don’t sell directly to Amazon. Amazon has to buy their stuff, third party through a wholesaler or something.” And they made a big deal about this and I think wrote some really interesting things about the relationship between Amazon and publishers. I already knew this in the back of my brain and they reached out and they were like, “This zine is really cool, we want to put out a version of it too.” And that came right as I was exhausted by putting together my own, and I was like, “This is great timing. I would love your help, you guys-“

Craig Silva:

My arm is sore.

Danny Caine:

Yeah, right. And then within a couple months it was selling well enough that he came back and was like, “I think this needs to turn into a book. I think there’s more work to do.” And we went back and forth about what form it would take. The book I had in mind to write was actually How to Protect Bookstores and Why, the one that just came out. That was the kind of book I was dreaming of, but he was like, “No, I think we need to write about Amazon first.” And we as editor/author discussions, but we agreed on a format and expanded it into a book and it took off.

And I think it’s fulfilling that role in a lot of places where people are concerned, people are handing it to people to have that discussion about corporate monopolies and small businesses and the importance of our communities. And then it started selling and then I got the chance, I was like, “”well, I have this idea for a sequel I’ve been sitting on for a really long time,” and that’s how it turned into the new one. Not a conventional path for a nonfiction book- [inaudible 00:17:27]

Karen Farmer:

That’s awesome.

Danny Caine:

… via Twitter DM.

Craig Silva:

I’ve only read the original orange kind of more zine like one, but I have seen photos and I’ve seen them in the store too of the second edition with the kind of illustrated cover. For folks like me who have only read the first one, why should I go run to my bookstore and grab the second one? What should I expect it to be different?

Danny Caine:

It took just as long to expand it into a second edition than it did to write the whole first one. So I think of it as an entirely different book. One thing I added was a new chapter on the climate. I didn’t really get to address climate change in a way I wanted to in the first book, so I added a new chapter on that. I expanded a lot, just the discussion of books, and I think there’s a book argument against Amazon is that if you like books, that’s not a good place to buy books. They sell books, they don’t care about books. And for someone like me who really loves books, they’re more fun and more joyful ways and just more literary ways to purchase.

I really looked at the decline in quality of the book experience on Amazon a lot in the second edition. And then it’s like, after I turned it in, a lot happened. A lot of important stuff happened that I was like, I think I need to revisit this. Primarily being on the labor side, you had massive union drives in Bessemer, Alabama and Staten Island, New York and the Staten Island wanted successful in forming a labor union at an Amazon facility, which a lot of people thought was never going to happen. And I had just the very, very beginning of that story in the first edition because Christian Smalls, who ended up starting the labor union in Staten Island was fired over organizing a CCOVID protest in favor of bringing safety measures to his Amazon warehouse, and they made a point of scapegoating him.

And that’s where that story ended in the first edition, but then he went on to organize and create this national movement of Amazon labor, and that felt really important to me to include in the second edition. They’ve joked about a third edition. I don’t know if I even want to do that or not, but it’s like stuff keeps happening. An people are saying that Lina Khan and the FTC are gearing up to do a really big antitrust lawsuit against Amazon sometime this summer, and that’s pretty huge and it addresses a lot of the challenges I talk about in the book presumably. So we’ll see. One of the challenges of writing current event’s nonfiction I’ve found is figuring out when to stop. It’s like- [inaudible 00:20:06]

Craig Silva:

Current events keep happening.

Danny Caine:

Right.

Craig Silva:

Well, you’ve sold me. I will go buy the second edition at my local bookstore right after this.

Karen Farmer:

Well, and I wanted to talk about the audiobook a little bit. Thank you for setting the visual for us at the beginning of the barn, the middle of nowhere, the barn has-

Craig Silva:

Boy, did you.

Karen Farmer:

… we need to see pictures of this. I wanted to ask you just in general what your experience with being a narrator was like a lot of folks that we’ve talked to who are narrating their own books have told us they’re not a huge fan of doing it.

Danny Caine:

It’s really intense.

Karen Farmer:

They hate it.

Danny Caine:

You’re definitely coming face to face with the book and there’s another thing you learn after you publish a book is it’s impossible to publish a book without any mistakes in it. And I had thought I found all the mistakes, but then I did the audiobook and there were a couple things. It was like then they fixed it. Another reason to buy the second edition is because I fixed all the stuff I noticed when I was doing the audiobook because it’s like you read through it over and over again when you’re in the editing process, but reading it out loud is paying a whole different kind of attention. And it was physical, it was rigorous, and my book is short. I think it’s just like a four-hour audiobook or maybe even three and a half, but it took two days, and it is definitely a physical experience to do that much. I can’t imagine the folks who are doing this for eight hours every day.

Craig Silva:

They probably don’t have barn cats crawling all over them in the booth though.

Danny Caine:

That’s true. But you gave me a newfound respect for the people who are really good, and I listen to Libro all the time, and it’s amazing what a good narrator can do to really animate a book. And there have been some books that I thought were more fun to read on audio than on the page just because the narrator brings so much more to the text.

Craig Silva:

Do you have any favorite narrators that you like?

Danny Caine:

I knew were going to ask that. I’m pulling up my app because I want to shout them out. So I’m opening my library. I just read the… Oh, I guess that was Author. The Net and Yahoos by Joshua Cohen, which won the Pulitzer a couple years ago. I guess he’s the narrator on that. He did a great job, and that one has music and a couple other voices too, so that’s a really good audiobook production. I love that book so much though that I had to get to the end, and so I was alternating between a paper copy and the Libro. I really love the woman who did all of the Neapolitan novels for Elena Ferrante.

Karen Farmer:

Oh, yes.

Danny Caine:

The person I love, I also really have a really big soft spot for Irish audiobook narrators. There’s something about a good Irish audiobook narrator that I’ll just listen to anything. All the folks who have done Tana French’s Murder Squad mysteries, that was my candy at the beginning of the pandemic when I couldn’t pay attention to anything else. I tore my way through that series, and the best one is The Likeness, which I listened to, and Heather O’Neill was the narrator on that. One of the things I love about Libro is that you can click on the narrator’s name though. That’s super cool and browse. So yeah, let me get the Elena Ferrante. Hillary Huber, that’s who it is. Yeah, she’s really good.

Craig Silva:

Awesome. Thanks. So moving on to 50 Ways to Protect Bookstores. So when you said this comes out in the fall?

Danny Caine:

So the 50 Ways to Protect Bookstores is a zine that we put out as kind of a sneak preview and then the full book version, which is called How to Protect Bookstores and Why. I just went to the Microcosm warehouse this week to get my contributor copies.

Craig Silva:

Nice.

Danny Caine:

So yeah, there it is. Yeah, what do you want to know?

Craig Silva:

Yeah, I was just wondering if you could tell us a bit about it, and then obviously you cannot tell us all 50 ways because you have zines to sell, but if you want to tell us one or two ways that you think our listeners could… Actions they could take to help their bookstores, that’d be great.

Danny Caine:

Well, the whole project in general, I wanted to tell the same story. This project has always been about the importance of community and small businesses and bookstores in particular in building that community and the threats posed to those communities by this billionaire monopoly vision of the world. And I think How to Resist Amazon and Why tells that story from a cautionary tale, but I wanted to really focus on the people who are doing great work in spite of these challenges and in the midst of these challenges. So How to Protect Bookstores and Why is centered on 12 case studies of innovative and inspiring bookstores. I went to all of them, I interviewed multiple people at each place and told their story of post COVID, post George Floyd, post inflation book selling, post gentrification book selling, and how do you carve out a place and nurture your community in the midst of all this?

Then intertwined with all that are these kind of practical things for people to show up. I wanted it to be an action oriented book too, so people could read it and be like, “This is how I can help bookstores.” I think one thing I heard over and over again is just to show up and be part of that community and go to events. Of course, buying books is kind of the heart of it, but even just being there, making friends with the people who work there becoming a familiar face, just to have a full bookstore is really important for these places. Especially if there’s something like an event going on, but showing up could be more at times. One thing I kept running into is this kind of assault on the freedom to read that’s happening, which is primarily focused on libraries, but it does leak over into bookstores.

And one of the bookstores I talked to, Loyalty in Washington DC has had multiple drag story hour events attacked by right-wing protestors, one of which was an actual group of Proud Boys that tried to physically force their way into the store. And what saved the event and protected those booksellers in both cases was people showing up and there was a barricade of allies in the front of the store that was literally forcing the Proud Boys away. It turned into a physical confrontation, but imagine what would’ve happened if they had made it into the store. There are whatever ways to show up for your bookstore or for your community that are called for in that moment are really important. And that’s why being plugged into that community is so crucial because if you’re plugged in and you’re communicating with the bookstore and you’re connected, you’ll know which ways they need you to show up.

I’m thinking of also the great bookstore, Yu and Me in Chinatown in New York City was just destroyed in a fire. The apartment above it burned down and all the water flooded down into the bookstore. They’re going to be closed for more than a year I think, but they raised $300,000 on Kickstarter in less than a week. And that’s another way to show up. If you can sometimes the solution to the problem is money and if you have it in the bookstore doesn’t, that’s another great way to show up. So just being there and present in the community is kind of what animates all 50 of the steps in the zine and all that stuff in the book version too.

Karen Farmer:

I was just going to ask you a dumb audiobook question next, but I’m going to pivot because following onto everything you just told us, which is beautiful, flipping that in the opposite direction, what advice do you have for bookstore owners and booksellers that are struggling with the climate that we’re in right now, or even people who think they might want to enter into this world and are considering opening a store right now?

Danny Caine:

I think it’s the same advice, connect to a community is really good advice for all involved, and if you’re trying to do this alone, it’s not going to work. And the reason I think the Raven works isn’t because I’m some sort of wiz kid in book selling. It’s because we have a really great team and we communicate and everybody brings their strengths. It’s a monstrously difficult thing, but the combination of everybody’s strengths and working together makes what we do possible, and you can even zoom out again. And our connection to other bookstores and other people in the industry is also really important. I pull huge inspiration from my friends and colleagues at other bookstores in America and now around the world, and that’s part of the fun with this book is that it’s really connected me to people everywhere.

I went to Paris to interview Shakespeare and Company for How to Protect Bookstores and Why they’re one of the stores in the book, and they were really interested in the Amazon discussion because they’re not as far along as we are. And I find that in other countries people are like, “How do we prevent it from getting it as bad as it is there?” It’s just never act like you’re alone in it. And I think there’s a danger to the thinking of independent bookstores. If you get too independent that turns into a loan, and that’s not true at all. I think it’s important to think collectively as well because we’re all facing a lot of the same challenges. Everybody’s rent is too high, everybody’s customers are spending less because of inflation. Everybody is facing increased prices of books and paper, and if we team up and communicate and hold space for each other and form communities, I think we’re able to address those challenges a lot better.

Karen Farmer:

And I guess now I will ask my audiobook question. Do you plan to make an audiobook for this one as well?

Danny Caine:

I would love to. I haven’t. It is kind of on my list to see if I can reach out to make it happen, but I would really love to. And I was also thinking about it in editing this time. I was like, “Let’s really be careful in the editing and copy editing.” And shout out to my editor Olivia in Microcosm. She did a great job keeping me on track and cleaning everything up.

Karen Farmer:

Awesome.

Craig Silva:

That’s awesome, I can’t wait to read this. We’ve obviously been talking about community a whole ton during this entire podcast so far, but we do have one specific question about it, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. And you touched on it a little bit earlier that bookstores are very in their community, maybe even more so than some other small businesses, although all small businesses are a part of their community in some ways. And I saw just from stalking Raven’s socials that you are super involved. I saw signage about local laws that were maybe being passed, food drives, trans rights, read-a-thon, all sorts of stuff in the community. What do you think makes bookstores like yours so uniquely positioned to be so involved in their community?

Danny Caine:

Well, I think at its basis, I think book selling is already political, which makes it well-suited for political injustice work because the simple question of what you order and what you put on the shelves and how you display it, that itself is arguing for something. Every time you put a book on your shelf, you are arguing something about that book. In a curated bookstore, you’re saying this book is worthy of your attention, and that itself is an argument. So if you think of this idea comes from the feminist book stores movement in the 1970s, it’s called the Feminist Shelf, but it’s the idea that… And they were using it to further feminist movement goals and practices, but you can also I think use it for any kind of justice work. The idea that creating a certain collection of books and arranging it in a certain way, both what is in the store, but where things are situated in relation to each other, you’re creating an argument that’s a political argument.

So it’s not that much of a stretch to push that even further and be like, “Okay, how are we fighting for justice in the greater world?” And if people are coming here lately, especially Kansas just passed this bill called SB 180, which is a really restrictive attack on trans rights. It’s arguing about… I mean the Secretary of State wants people’s genders to revert to their sex assigned at birth when they renew their registrations regardless of their gender identity. It has limitations on who can use what kind of bathrooms. It’s a really scary bill. We find it very important just to create a safe space where people can be. And it’s like nobody caress what bathroom you use here. It’s all gender, it’s a single stall. You’re safe here and you’re also going to give you access to reading material that validates who you are and gives you strategies to fight for better world.

So you can see how creating the arguments on yourself turns into real life justice work. We just think about our priorities as people and our priorities as booksellers and think about how we can use the bookstore model to fight for a better world. I think a great example, we did kind of a pride month closing queer mixer. We were like, “We’re going to close the store early and then open it for this kind of private event where just queer people, whatever that means to you can come here and be safe and be amongst each other and we’re creating space for that. And we of course ordered special books that would be of interest to folks like that. And we also had resources.

We had the public library there with resources about changing your birth certificate to better reflect your gender identity. We had people from the sexual trauma and care center, and so it’s creating a space and also trying to connect people with resources they may need and it was great. It was a full store, it was a really great event. And we’re probably going to repeat it. So it’s just that kind of work. It’s like what are you already doing as a bookstore and how can you extend it just a little bit to create some sort of fighting for a better world?

Craig Silva:

God, I love that. Your community is lucky to have you, and I feel like we’re all lucky to have our bookstores in our neighborhood, so thank you for doing that.

Danny Caine:

Well, that’s the thing is it’s different per community. And a Brooklyn bookstore is going to do something that’s uniquely special to Brooklyn, that Brooklyn might need. And I think that’s where the idea of independence does become a productive idea is every bookstore is going to have a different answer to that question. And that’s important because every bookstore is in a different community, and that’s why national chain, it’s like you’re not going to get the same thing from franchises or chains because they’re thinking from a national level where a lot of this community stuff is based on really small or local, not small, localized issues and localized concerns.

Craig Silva:

I feel like every time right before we get to the lightning round, we have whatever the hardest conversation question asked-

Karen Farmer:

Heaviest question.

Craig Silva:

… And then we have this awkward, now let’s talk about your favorite food. So that was my awkward transition into the lightning round. So thank you for sharing that. Like we mentioned before, we started recording every episode, we like to ask some kind of more silly and potentially more personal questions towards the end of the episode. So without further ado, Karen, do you want to ask the first question?

Karen Farmer:

I do. I’m so excited. So on your website, your personal website, your header is slightly different on each page revealing that you are a bookseller, a bookstore owner, a poet, and something else. On one of these pages, it says you’re an excellent grocery shopper. What does that look like? And do you have any pro-tips?

Danny Caine:

Oh, man, that was the first time I’ve ever been asked about that. I made that website 15 years ago. Thank you. I think that’s also, that’s changed since having a child. Everything is a lot more overwhelming in terms of the domestic sphere now. I’m not as proud of my grocery shopping ability as I used to be. I do love grocery stores, and I’m happily married and I have been for 10 years. But I think going to a grocery store on a date is a really great idea because I think you can really learn a lot about somebody. And also if someone can’t make an adventure out of a grocery store, I’m not sure I’d want to be with them anyway. But also going abroad, I love going to grocery stores in other countries. It’s so fun. And I always end up with weird snacks. So part of me is… This is a long answer, this isn’t lightning at all.

Karen Farmer:

This is great.

Craig Silva:

This is a lightning storm.

Danny Caine:

Every writer just has a couple obsessions. And I write poetry and I write these books about small businesses and communities, and I think they’re all kind of animated by the same question of how do you be human in the post-capitalist world when corporations control so many aspects of what we experience? How do you find joy and authenticity and love and all that other stuff? Poetry is one way to explore that. And the nonfiction is another, but I think poetry is great because it’s a space for ambivalence or conflicted feelings much more than nonfiction is, at least how I write it. So with poems, I can critique the conditions that led to a mega supermarket and also find joy in the experience and the overwhelming bounty that I find there. That’s a lot of what I’m thinking about when I write poems, and I think that’s probably why something about grocery stores ended up on the website.

Karen Farmer:

That is an amazing answer. I’m so [inaudible 00:38:33] I asked that question. Thank you.

Craig Silva:

I’m looking forward to How to Resist Whole Foods and Why book now?

Danny Caine:

It’s owned by Amazon, so it’s in there. Yeah.

Craig Silva:

Nice. I got to get that second edition. So what game show do you think you could go on and win?

Danny Caine:

We’ve been watching a lot of Jeopardy. I like Jeopardy. I like to fantasize about being on Jeopardy. I don’t know if it’s… That’s the answer I want to say, but I think the actual true answer is The Price Is Right.

Craig Silva:

Nice.

Danny Caine:

It ties back to the grocery shopper. If you need me to put six groceries in order of price, I can probably do it better than I can have a grasp of the history of the Kings of England or whatever else. Literature and poetry categories, I’m always great. I’m always rooting for final Jeopardy to be a book question. And it’s like there’s so many situations where I’m yelling at this screen, “It’s Tony Morrison, you idiots. How do you not know this?”

Karen Farmer:

So I saw that Raven Book Store has two bookstore cats, is that correct?

Danny Caine:

One is retired and one still lives at the store, but yes.

Karen Farmer:

Well, for the sake of this question, we’ll consider them both still active. Which one is your favorite and why?

Danny Caine:

I can’t answer that. I’m going to get in trouble if I answer that, so I’m going to-

Craig Silva:

I’ll edit it out, trust me.

Danny Caine:

They’re both so wonderful. Yeah, I mean, Dashel is the one at the store. He’s really gregarious and the classic kind of large male bossy cat. And then Naya was a very regal, she was a tiny black cat. She just kind of got worn out on the customer life. So she moved home with one of our co-owners, and now she’s living a really happy retirement, like chasing bugs in the backyard. It’s much better for speed. Yeah, she’ll come to visit every now and then and we get pictures from that bookseller, but they’re both wonderful.

Karen Farmer:

Awesome.

Danny Caine:

Yeah, I would just really get in trouble with the booksellers if I had to pick.

Karen Farmer:

Totally fair. It was a controversial question.

Craig Silva:

Which cat wrote the book?

Danny Caine:

Dashel.

Craig Silva:

Nice.

Danny Caine:

That’s the big one. That’s the gregarious gray one.

Craig Silva:

Needed a lot of body mass to fill that keyboard. So we’ve talked a lot about the bookstore so far, and I want to know what is the best part about running a bookstore and what is the worst part about running a bookstore?

Danny Caine:

I mean, it’s so great to be… This community work is really fulfilling and valuable to me. I’ve really gotten to know a set of amazing coworkers very well, folks who have come and gone and folks who are still there. It’s been a real privilege to get to know them and work alongside them and just to meet folks like you two and folks at publishers and just to get a sense of, despite its challenges, how cool this industry can be and how many cool people are in it. Trying to do good work despite everything that’s stacked against us has been, that’s like me finding my community is meeting everybody, both at the Raven and Nationwide and around the world. I’ve met some really great folks around the world from bookstores too.

So just the kind of people that brought me to, I think is the best part. And the hardest part is it’s always challenging to turn a passion into a business. And it’s like there are days where books are frustrating to me and it’s like, I love them, I love reading them, but it can be tricky when your bread and butter is also your passion, and that’s kind of the dream. But there’s also a risk. There are days when that’s hard, but I mean, overall, it’s been the best thing I’ve ever done. So the good far outweighs the bad.

Craig Silva:

I love that idea of it being really hard to turn your passion into a business. I’ve dealt with that myself before. I was really into music and I was like, I’m going to start a record label, but a year in, I was like, “I hate records now. Never want to see another cassette or record for as long as I live.” I totally get it.

Danny Caine:

I’ve been roller skating a lot going to the rink, and it’s been really fun and I’ve gotten really interested in rink culture and the folks who do this and who have done it for decades, and it’s like, of course me. I’m like, “Well, I should write a book about roller rinks.” And then after a while I was like, “No, I don’t want to turn this into research. This is fun. I want to keep this as not work.” So at least for now, I’ve decided against it just because of the perils of turning something that you love and do for fun into a money maker.

Karen Farmer:

Danny, what is your favorite Waffle House menu item and why?

Danny Caine:

That’s a very good question. I’ll tell you my order. Well, I have a breakfast order and a lunch order. So for breakfast I get two eggs with bacon and hash browns, and I get my hash browns smothered, chunked and capped, which means excellent onions, ham, and mushrooms. And then the Texas Bacon Chicken Club is a delicious chicken sandwich for lunch. It’s very, very good. And I ask them, “Why is this chicken so delicious?” And one time they told me because it’s like they ship it in the marinade. It’s marinating in as they get the chicken, so it’s marinating for a long time.

Craig Silva:

The secret is out.

Danny Caine:

My first three poetry books each have a Waffle House poem in them. I really love… It’s one of those places I find joy in the post capitalist hell scape we call the Midwest.

Karen Farmer:

Well, speaking of what you just said about getting too close to things you love, and I worked at a Waffle House for one day.

Danny Caine:

Did you really? For one day.

Karen Farmer:

And I will tell you, I experience it differently now. I kind of wish I-

Danny Caine:

I’m sure you do. I have all the admiration of the world for the folks who work there. That cannot be an easy job. There’s no such thing as non-skilled labor. And go to a Waffle House at 2:00 AM and you will understand that.

Karen Farmer:

It’s a tough crowd.

Craig Silva:

All right. Last lightning round question. What is your current either desktop or phone background and why?

Danny Caine:

Oh, desktop is just the default. It’s like some blue blobs, but the phone is the front plaza at Shakespeare and Company, which I took when I was there. I was a writer in residence there for three days, and it was really magical. They have an apartment that loaned to writers upstairs in their building. I went on their podcast, I signed some books, and that was the price for a place to stay in Paris for free for three days. It was amazing.

Craig Silva:

It’s a pretty good deal.

Danny Caine:

I mean, a lot of people go there and they breeze in and out in an hour and they’re onto the next step. But to really sink into the history and to feel how much has happened in that place and how much those folks care about books was really special. And I think the phone background kind of helps me connect to that. I can look at that and just think about the places this job has taken me and people who have done a really good job stewarding a community for a really long time. And it’s like I put it there to kind of remind me even on the hard days that it’s like you got to go to Shakespeare and Company and write about it. And these folks have figured out how to do really important stuff for a really long time.

Craig Silva:

That’s a really good answer. I’m glad it wasn’t the default on both. So our last thing before we say goodbye and ask you what you’re reading, so there’s your fair warning to be side pulling up your story right now is Instagram story time, where I think we told you we were stalking your Instagram already, but we like to comb through it, find a picture that we either find funny or interesting and ask for the story behind it. So Karen was the person that found this one.

Karen Farmer:

Yes. I was the stalker this week and I went pretty far back in the archives for this. So here we go. I found, I think a series of photos. You posted a few of these from a place called the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum, and it looked like you were making some pretty sweet stuff there. What’s the scoop with this?

Danny Caine:

I spent a week there, that was really cool. When I was in my MFA at the University of Kansas, I was looking to learn how to do other things because I had a feeling that teaching wasn’t going to be it for me. One of those things was starting… I got a job at the Raven, which ended up being the answer to what I was going to do, but I also took a book arts certificate and took a series of classes to learn how to design and make books. So I mean, that taught me how to use InDesign, which has been super helpful in my career. But one of the classes I got to take was a five-day immersive class at Hamilton, which it’s an old print factory. No, they made wood type there, and now they have a big print shop, and we were there from nine to five every day learning how to use their wood type in their letter presses.

It was super cool. It was a while ago. It was maybe eight or nine years ago, but it was really fun just to this beautiful antique wood type, and it was like, “We’ll be here to help but go experiment and have fun.” And it made me fall in love with Wisconsin, those small towns in Wisconsin with the cheese curds and the Brandy Old Fashions and the… Yeah, it’s Two Rivers, Wisconsin. Hamilton is a great museum, it’s open to the public. It’s a really cool visit. And then that town is really fun too. It’s an hour or two south of Door County, so it’s definitely a good road trip stop. I actually went back a year or two later and went and hung out in the museum and helped them clean some type and have stayed in touch. They’re good folks.

Karen Farmer:

I’m like seething with envy. That program sounds amazing- [inaudible 00:48:42]

Danny Caine:

Linda Samson Talleur at the University of Kansas is an amazing letterpress teacher and a friend, and it was really cool to learn how to do that stuff.

Craig Silva:

I took a letterpress class in college, and then also I’ve taken classes after the fact just because I missed it. And when you just said cleaning the type, I got this visceral reaction to that smell. It’s a very particular smell. It just like took me back.

Danny Caine:

The toothbrush dipped into the minerals spirit.

Craig Silva:

Exactly. Before we go, surprise, we want to know what you’re reading right now and what you would recommend that we should go get.

Danny Caine:

Okay, cool. Right now I’m in a research mode. I’m starting work on a poetry collection, and I think it’s going to be about American Jewish identity and coming to terms with being a parent in a mixed marriage. I’m reading a lot of the classic Jewish comedy novels. That’s where I read The Netanyahus, which was absolutely brilliant. I thought it was kind of a left field choice for the Pulitzer. I don’t know why it took me so long to get to it, but it’s amazing. And now I’m reading Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, which is a huge deal like 20 years ago. Have never read it. I’m enjoying it a lot.

In terms of summer fiction, James McBride has a new novel coming out next month, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, which actually fits into the Jewish comedy genre too. It’s about a small town in Pennsylvania where the local Black population and the local Jewish population team up to shelter the disabled kid from the state. He’s a member of the Black community and the state wants to take him away. And it’s a caper. If you know James McBride, it’s told with great love for its characters and an amazing sense of humor. He’s probably my favorite novelist and he’s only written a couple, but The Good Lord Bird and Deacon King Kong are both incredible. And this is a really great addition to the James McBride.

Craig Silva:

You’re going to love our next episode of this podcast then, because that’s who we’re interviewing. So Karen and I-

Danny Caine:

Are you really?

Craig Silva:

… Yeah. So Karen and I are both actively reading that book right now.

Karen Farmer:

I haven’t started it yet.

Danny Caine:

Oh, my god.

Craig Silva:

Well, I’m actively reading it.

Danny Caine:

Tell him that Danny from the Raven is a huge fan. I met him at Winter Institute once, but I love those books. He’s so great and he’s a really interesting person to talk to. You guys are going to have a great time.

Craig Silva:

Yeah, we can’t wait.

Karen Farmer:

Oh, awesome.

Danny Caine:

That’s a good get. Nice job, guys. It’s always an honor to… I was on the Shakespeare and Company podcast and Hernan Diaz was just on it the other day and they’ve interviewed Ottessa Moshfegh. It’s always kind of an eyeopening moment for me to see who else has been on the podcast.

Karen Farmer:

You are an equally big deal, Danny.

Danny Caine:

I don’t know about that.

Karen Farmer:

Well, Danny, thank you so much for spending your Friday afternoon with us. This was such a pleasure and we can’t wait to keep in touch and we’ll talk to you about that next audiobook. Let’s get it going.

Danny Caine:

Okay. Please do. I’m totally interested. All right, and say hi to James for me.

Karen Farmer:

We will.

Craig Silva:

We will, thanks for the time. Nice to see you again.

Danny Caine:

Thank you. All right, bye.

Karen Farmer:

Bye.

Well, I think that about does it for our interview. Thank you so much for listening. As of the date that this podcast airs September 19th, you can get your hands on a copy of Danny’s book, How to Protect Bookstores and Why. So highly recommend that you go check that out. You can also get the audiobook version from us at Libro.fm.

Craig Silva:

Yes, please run to your nearest bookstore and purchase this book. Danny is a gem and deserves your money. Give him and your local bookstore your money.

Karen Farmer:

Absolutely.

Craig Silva:

Protect that bookstore.

Karen Farmer:

Well, Craig, before we go, I would love to hear a little bit about what you are currently reading.

Craig Silva:

I just started a new book, so I don’t have a strong opinion on it yet, but for any listener of this podcast or friend of mine in real life, you might know that I like a author you may have heard of named Stephen King.

Karen Farmer:

I didn’t know this about you, I’m stunned.

Craig Silva:

Wow. I can tell from your face, you are so stunned. Yes. Stephen King just released a new book called Holly and for readers of Stephen King, the name will sound familiar, it is Holly Gibney who has made appearances in other Stephen King books most recently The Outsider, which I absolutely adored. The Outsider was so good. So I am very excited to dive into Holly and see what she is up to. I’m just a little bit into it and it is told from different perspectives, which I love. It is kind of a, who done it, thriller/horror. Wow. Big surprise being Stephen King, but I’m liking it so far. I’m interested to see where it goes. I will not say too much more about it. I do not want to have an opinion that I will have to walk back in a future episode. So for now, I will say that if you liked The Outsider, go grab this book.

Karen Farmer:

I’ve been hearing so much about this. My dad and my sister are huge Stephen King fans. They’ve read everything and they’re sharing a copy of this and there’s been a lot of family conversations like, “Hurry up, hurry up, finish it so I can read it.”

Craig Silva:

When you first said it, I was like, did they cut it in half?

Karen Farmer:

Horizontally? Is that how that works?

Craig Silva:

Oh, that’s even worse. I was picturing directly down the center.

Karen Farmer:

It’s more work that way. Cool. Good to know. Thank you for the recommendation.

Craig Silva:

Speaking of recommendations, what are you reading, Karen?

Karen Farmer:

Also reading horror.

Craig Silva:

Shocked.

Karen Farmer:

And loving it. I am reading The September House by Carissa Orlando and it is so enjoyable. This book is about an older couple who has moved into… It’s a classic haunted house story. They’ve moved into this house that’s been on and off the market over and over again. It’s super old. People keep selling it back to the bank for unknown reasons. The realtor when they buy this is super cagey with them about like, “Ooh, maybe let’s skip the basement on this tour.: That kind of thing. And sure enough, they move in. There are ghostly apparitions all over this house who over the course of time they’ve come to know their names. Some of them are like your classic creepy children. I can’t believe I like this book.

Craig Silva:

This sounds amazing.

Karen Farmer:

I’m so scared of ghosts and I love this book. There is something particularly nefarious happening in the basement of this house that’s kind of orchestrating all of the shenanigans. And the reason we call it The September House is that in September, blood starts pouring from the walls and-

Craig Silva:

Oh, no.

Karen Farmer:

… the ghostly figures become extra heightened in their shenanigans that they’re perpetrating against the owners. And basically we pick up the story, this has been going on for multiple years. The husband has either left or gone missing. We’re not sure. The woman’s daughter comes back to visit to try to help figure out where the husband has gone. And Margaret, the main character, is desperately trying to hide the goings on in this house from her daughter because she thinks the daughter’s going to try to make her move out, and she refuses to leave this house. She loves this house. So I am 60% of the way through. I love it. Honestly, the writing is very funny at times. The narrator is just amazing. I can’t wait to finish this, hopefully tonight .

Craig Silva:

I’m going to buy this book.

Karen Farmer:

It’s really good.

Craig Silva:

While you were talking, I Googled. I was like, “When did this come out? One, if it didn’t come out in September, I’m pissed. And two, is it out now?” Or do you have some sort of special, I’m a fancy podcaster privileges. But no, it came out September 5th. So as I say, on most episodes, I’ll be heading down to the Brookline Booksmith directly after this recording and buying this book.

Karen Farmer:

I think you’ll love it. This is right up your alley and-

Craig Silva:

You had me at haunted house shenanigans.

Karen Farmer:

I do recommend listening to the audiobook as well. I’m doing the classic back and forth between the two. And the narrator for the audiobook is chef’s kiss. She’s crushing it. I love her.

Craig Silva:

Nice. Love a back and forth.

Karen Farmer:

Indeed.

Craig Silva:

I’ll pick this up, I will report back to you. It better be good.

Karen Farmer:

It’s great. I’m confident you’re going to like it.

Craig Silva:

Well, everyone thank you for listening to another episode of our podcast. If you follow it, thank you. Please give us a rating. If you do not, think about it’s fun. Give it a follow. Just saying it might be fun.

Karen Farmer:

Also, if you are not a Libro.fm member yet, you can sign up using the special code LIBROPODCAST and you’ll get two audiobook credits for your first month of membership instead of just one.

Craig Silva:

And as always, thank you for listening.