It wasn’t corporate bookstores that drove Brazen Head Books underground, but New York City real estate prices. After the secondhand bookstore’s rent quadrupled in 1998, owner Michael Seidenberg took a ten-year hiatus before reopening Brazen Head as an appointment-only shop run out of an unmarked apartment. Since then, Seidenberg, now known as the “secret bookstore guy,” has opened his doors to novelists, bibliophiles, the occasional New Yorker journalist, and, most recently, an Etsy video team, which interviewed Seidenberg and profiled Brazen Head for their blog.
Even without business taxes, Seidenberg acknowledges that running a used bookstore isn’t exactly a profitable enterprise. “If it’s all about money, there are just better things to sell,” he quips. “I should sell crack, that’s a much better business.”
You can watch the Etsy video here.
