Long Island’s Bookstores | An Interview with Jocelyn Maningo Kaleita
Jocelyn Maningo Kaleita is the proud owner of the new A Book Place in Riverhead that opened up back in June. I wanted to know more about her story about opening up an indie bookstore.
Jess Mannhaupt: How did you first get into this industry?
Jocelyn Maningo Kaleita: I was 14.
JM: 14 wow! [Laughter.]
JMK: I started in the Open Book that was in WestHampton. The owner, Terry Lucas, who is now a librarian and director of the Shelter Island Library, took me under her wing, and kind of created a monster. She basically taught me everything there is to know about the industry. She was learning, too along the way. She believed in the natural, kind of organic, way of picking out books. I just fell into step with it, and fell in love with it.
JM: Where did that take you into buying your own bookstore?
JMK: College wise I went to become a photojournalist, and I worked in some magazines. I worked in the city a little bit, not even doing journalism, but in the garment district. I decided I liked research, but I don’t like the writing aspect of it, so I went back to school to become a librarian. I was a librarian for the past 15 years, I still am. I do private librarianship. This happened to fall into my lap over the summer. I had already had the business drawn up and running for the past 12 years, and things fell into place.
JM: When I grew up I worked for 2 years as a library page, so that leaped me into the industry.
JMK: Yeah, I had the opportunity to work at Burton’s before Scott opened it and bought it. It was nice. I worked there for about 2 years, and I cleaned it up and consulted. It was fun learning different things from George [laughter]. Seeing how he did stuff and then saying nope!
JM: [Laughter] How was that, working for George?
JMK: He’s a great guy. Funny. Wonderful stories. He was always trying to feed me food. He was just trustworthy, and he let me do my own thing and find my own way. He gave me another aspect of the bookstore business – how it can be molded and changed and become really developed into what you want.
JM: How do you think those storage struggles shaped how you built this beautiful environment?
JMK: Owning your own business has its struggles… I don’t have a loan. I did it based on a few financial decisions. My inventory since the past couple of months has grown from what I started with. That’s because people are coming in, I’m hearing what they like, I’ve been reading more, so basically 80% of the store is what I have read.
JM: That’s something to be proud of! [Laughter]
JMK: I was taught what you don’t sell, you don’t read, so if I haven’t read it it has come highly recommended.
JM: With the Book Revue in Huntington closing, and now the Next Chapter opening up with fundraising, what are your opinions on fundraising vs. starting from scratch?
JMK: I think it depends on what you know how to do. I don’t know how to do the fundraising part, that wasn’t part of my plan. I think buying somebody’s store even if you’ve been working with them before is tremendously difficult because you see something working, and you don’t want to reinvent the wheel.