A few years ago, Francisco Hernandez opened a bookstore, a physical bookstore.

Some people just flat out thought I was crazy.

When I was starting out and I was talking to bankers and brokers and lawyers,

they were so skeptical.

They kept asking me questions like, you're not going to really sell books, right? You're going to sell coffee. You're going to sell wine or beer or, you know, sell drugs or something to make this viable.

Hernandez's store is called Leaves. It's on a treeline street in Brooklyn. And it doesn't sell

wine or beer or coffee or drugs. It sells used books, books with worn covers, inscriptions,

and that distinctive smell of old paper. Buying a secondhand book, you're part of something bigger immediately,

because somebody else had that.

You're already in commune with somebody else over space and time.

There's something that is really special about that.

It may be special, but the average used book isn't exactly a valuable commodity.

Americans throw away around 320 million of them every year.

We read them once or twice, or even not at all, and they end up being a bulky nuisance in the garage.

Used bookstore owners like Hernandez have access to a virtually unlimited pool of inventory.

But they have to make a series of calculated economic decisions to figure out what's worthy of shelf

space.

Every bookseller is going to have a very different cost-benefit analysis based on what you

would think of as their brand. Some books can be there as a conversation starter. Some books

can be there because they're fun and funny. Some books should be there because their social and

political importance are so huge that it needs to be in the public's eye. But most books have to earn their rent in the I.

But most books have to earn their rent in the store or else you don't make money.

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