Feminist Bookstore News

Feminist Bookstore News (FBN) was a trade publication for feminist bookstores. It was active from 1976 until 2000,^[1] and issues were published sometimes bimonthly and sometimes quarterly.^[2] The publication was described by Tee Corinne as "the glue that kept women booksellers around the world together",^[3] acting as a network for feminist booksellers and publishers across the United States and transnationally.^[4][5][6]

Feminist Bookstore News was founded by Carol Seajay after the First National Women in Print Conference, intended to help the community that had attended stay in touch with each other.^[7] The five largest feminist bookstores donated $100 each ($535 in 2023) to help start the publication.^[8] The first issue was published on October 14, 1976.^[7]

The publication began as a six-page mimeographed newsletter^[9] called Feminist Bookstores Newsletter,^[10] supported by funding from Womanbooks, Amazon Bookstore Cooperative, and New Words Bookstore.^[11] The name was changed to Feminist Bookstore News in 1984. By 1988 the publication was 48 pages long and issues were professionally printed roughly every two months.^[12]

As feminist bookstores became less common due to chain stores and online shopping, the subscriber count of FBN dropped, and publication eventually ceased in 2000.^[11]

Book lists were common in FBN, with a focus on connecting readers with resources and supporting authors. Early list topics included “Native American Women,” “Black Women,” and “Young Women & Youth Liberation.”^[13]

After Toni Morrison's book The Bluest Eye went out of print in the mid-1970s, FBN promoted a campaign to demonstrate demand to publishers by writing them orders for large quantities of the book. The Bluest Eye was reissued in 1978.^[10] A similar effort took place with The Female Man by Joanna Russ, which went out of print in 1977 and was also re-released in 1978 after advocacy from feminist booksellers coordinated by FBN. This type of letter-writing campaign was often repeated in the publication.^[14]

FBN popularized the practice of sending a portion of profit to feminist authors when selling copies of their remaindered books, because authors did not receive royalties from publishers for these copies.^[15]

• PDFs of issues 1983-2000 (on JSTOR)