Welcome back to Got Books, the podcast where we talk to booksellers all around the world. My guest today is Danny Caine, bookseller and co-owner of The Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, Kansas.
The Raven was founded in 1987 as a mystery-specialty store, and today you can walk in to find books of fiction, current events, environmental writing, children's books, science fiction, romance, and poetry. The poetry section in particular might have something to do with today’s guest, who is himself a published poet. But we’ll come back to that.
In recent years, the Raven and especially it’s majority owner Danny have become small business and anti-Amazon activists, through viral tweets turned into books, media appearances, such as this one, and a growing collection of activist zines. And as of 2022, the Raven is one of the very few employee-owned bookstores.
The Raven stands for something. It believes that reading books won't fix the world's problems, but they can be a pretty good place to start. It believes that Amazon is bad and the United States Postal Service is good. And it believes that small businesses and independent bookstores are vital to their communities.
Danny wrote 2 books on the topic too, so I’ve invited him on Got Books to talk about his career as a bookseller, his popular books encouraging us to protect independent bookstores and of course..books. Here’s my conversation with Danny Caine, from The Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kansas.