Exploring Brooklyn’s Used Bookstores [Updated Dec 2025 Edition]

A guide to Brooklyn, New York’s recent used-bookstores from the last 20 years…

In this research zine, a copy of his online essay, writer Rainer Turim lays out the cultural and political context of street bookselling that eventually led to many of today’s indie used-bookstores in Brooklyn, including Better Read than Dead and the late Book Thug Nation. Interviews include Aaron Cometbus, co-founder of Book Thug Nation, Human Relations, Codex, and Troubled Sleep. Other bookstores featured include Molasses Books, Book Row, Unnameable Books, Spoonbill & Sugartown, leaves, Desert Island Comics, Property is Theft (The PIT), The Word is Change, Mil Mundos Books, and Topos Bookstore in Ridgewood, Queens. In the memory of Matty D'Angelo, co-founder of Better Read Than Dead.

Risograph printed at Secret Riso Club. Updated December, 2025 Edition. -Publisher