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Bookpeople

Defunct American bookseller

Bookpeople was an employee-owned and operated book wholesaler and distributor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. It operated from 1969-2003. Bookpeople was one of the major forces behind the renaissance of independent publishing that occurred during this period.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

1969Founded1
  • Industrybookselling1
  • HeadquartersBerkeley1

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Bookpeople was an employee-owned and operated book wholesaler and distributor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. It operated from 1969-2003. Bookpeople was one of the major forces behind the renaissance of independent publishing that occurred during this period. The business provided a wide range of hard-to-find titles to bookstores throughout the U.S. and the world. It also played a major role in the development of New Age and radical political publishing and bookselling. It was not related to The Book People, a U.K. publishing concern, or BookPeople, an Austin, Texas bookstore.2

The story

Don Gerrard started the business in 1969, which afterward was purchased by the employees, who re-formed it into a type of cooperative business. They incorporated in 1971 as the Bookpeople Employee's Association. It was one of the earliest cooperatives in the Bay Area. The business started in Berkeley, moving to nearby Oakland in the early 1990s. While being noted for carrying a wide range of controversial books, Bookpeople was also noted for refusing to carry books that were seen by some in the bookselling community as inappropriately sexist or exploitive, such as American Psycho.

From Wikipedia’s article on Bookpeople (distributor), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Timeline

  1. 2004Dissolved Dissolved1
  2. 1969Founded Founded1

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

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