Centraljersey.com looked at Labyrinth Books, Princeton, N.J., "the one and only bookseller on Nassau Street," which over the past 10 years has become "a Princeton fixture."
The store has grown largely because of its partnership with Princeton University, which "went against the trend of the day in bringing an independent, scholarly and community bookstore to town for all their book needs and has remained an incredible partner and supporter over the years," said Dorothea von Moltke, who owns the store with her husband, Cliff Simms, and brother-in-law Peter Simms.
Labyrinth also had stores in New York City, catering to Columbia University, and New Haven, Conn., catering to Yale University. The Connecticut store was closed, and after Chris Doeblin bought out Cliff Simms, the New York City store morphed into Book Culture.
Since 2012, with the help of the university, Labyrinth has been able to offer a 30% discount on coursebooks. "For better or worse, students have become very savvy at finding 'free' books online, at circulating pdfs of textbooks, at substituting video tutorials for textbooks, and at using social media for buying and selling from each other," von Moltke said. "So you can see why our course book operation has needed to adapt. Fortunately, in all of this Princeton University has remained always willing to sit down with us to come up with joint solutions that benefit the students and the university while helping to support the store."
The store also carries many trade books and has strong sales to the non-school market. It hosts three to four author events a week, and through wholesaler Great Jones Books, which the Labyrinth owners also own, the store has been able to stock a lot of remainders. "This allows us both to bring books back into circulation, which other stores have given up on, and to offer these books at often very steep discounts," von Moltke said. "You could say that in order to be the kind of booksellers we are, we also have to be book wholesalers."