Harvard Book Store is an independent and locally owned seller of used, new, and bargain books in Cambridge's Harvard Square.
Location | Cambridge, Massachusetts |
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Coordinates | 42°22′21″N 71°06′59″W / 42.3725°N 71.1164°W |
Opening date | 1932 |
Owner | Jeffrey Mayersohn and Linda Seamonson |
Website | Harvard Book Store website |
Harvard Book Store was established in 1932 by Mark Kramer, father of longtime owner Frank Kramer, and originally sold used textbooks to students.[1][2]
Family-owned for over seventy-five years, the store was sold in the fall of 2008 to Jeffrey Mayersohn and Linda Seamonson of Wellesley, Massachusetts, and remains an independent business.[3][4]
Though often confused with the Harvard Coop,[citation needed] the store has no affiliation with Harvard University or the Harvard Coop bookstore, which is managed by Barnes & Noble. With a focus on an academic and intellectual audience, the store's selection and customer service is repeatedly honored by local publications and surveys.[citation needed]
Forbes named the book store as its top bookshop in its "World's Top Shops 2005" list.[5]
In 2009, the store introduced an on-demand book printing service called the Espresso Book Machine, produced by New York firm On Demand Books, using books in the public domain available through Google Library.[6]
In recent years, a well-attended author event series has hosted Al Gore, Salman Rushdie, Haruki Murakami, John Updike, Orhan Pamuk, and Stephen King, in addition to a number of local writers and academics.[1]