Salcedo Village, Makati
Everything’s Fine is an independent bookshop and small press for Philippine art and critical writing.
Best for Philippine art and critical writing, published through its own small press.
Booksellers & Stationers — Page 3
Plate M-4 · 909 stores · 301–450 of 909 · curated ORBIS register
Tronsmo is an independent Oslo bookshop established in 1973, with comics forming a distinct part of its selection. TS Bokbinderi binds and restores books by hand in Oslo, providing a craft service alongside the retail booksellers here. After 8 Books combines a Paris bookshop with publishing, offering artists' books and essays alongside zines from independent presses.
What makes great booksellers & stationers?
This plate lists 909 shops in 100 countries. Paris has the most with 27, followed by Tokyo with 15. Among these shops, 5 offer repairs, 63 sell online and 3 work by appointment, going by their own descriptions.
Search by ISBN before you travel: ask the shop to confirm that the exact edition and language you want are on the shelf.
Ask about signed or limited copies: ask how a signed or numbered copy is documented and how it will be packed.
Ask about collection or delivery: an online listing is not proof a title is in the shop, so ask before making the trip.
Check access before you go. The American Book Center says every floor of its Amsterdam shop on the Spui is reached by lift, while only the ground floor of its shop in The Hague is accessible.
Explore booksellers & stationers
Use the city plates when they appear below, or open any store for its official door and related ORBIS city and craft links.
Amsterdam · 6Barcelona · 4Beirut · 4Berlin · 7Bogotá · 6Budapest · 14Buenos Aires · 6Cairo · 7Cape Town · 8Chicago · 6Cologne · 7Copenhagen · 4Delhi · 8Dublin · 5Edinburgh · 5Glasgow · 5Hanoi · 6Helsinki · 4Istanbul · 4Jakarta · 5Jerusalem · 7Lagos · 5Lima · 4Lisbon · 6London · 7Melbourne · 5Mexico City · 4Milan · 4Montevideo · 7Munich · 8Nairobi · 9New York · 4Oslo · 9Paris · 27Philadelphia · 6Prague · 7San Francisco · 8Santiago · 5Seattle · 6Seoul · 8Singapore · 5Sofia · 4Sydney · 6Taipei · 10Tokyo · 15Toronto · 4Vienna · 10Warsaw · 6
Visit official site ↗Ermita, Manila
Solidaridad Bookshop was opened in Manila in 1965 by writer F. Sionil José and his wife Tessie. The Padre Faura bookshop became associated with Philippine and Southeast Asian writing, alongside the couple’s publishing work. In June 2025, the family announced that the business was being offered for sale, so that report does not establish a completed change of ownership.
Best for Philippine literature and literary history
Visit Facebook ↗Marrakech / Morocco
The YSL Bookshop sits at the end of the exhibition route inside the Musee Yves Saint Laurent on Rue Yves Saint Laurent in Marrakech, its design echoing Isabelle Hebey's 1966 Saint Laurent Rive Gauche boutique. It sells books on Yves Saint Laurent, fashion, and Morocco, along with LOVE-themed posters and postcards and reissued "Loulou de la Falaise" jewelry, payable by credit card only.
Best for Bookshop, fashion books, jewelry
Visit official site ↗25 rue Fontange, 13006 Marseille, France / Marseille / France
Founded 2005 in La Plaine; labelled Librairie Indépendante de Référence (LIR) and supported by ADELC; member of Libraires du Sud (house À propos; Marseille Tourism bookshops page).
Best for Independent books in La Plaine from an LIR-recognised Marseille shop.
Visit official site ↗142 La Canebière, 13001 Marseille, France / Marseille / France
Librairie des Allées founded 1882 by Joseph Carbonell; bought 1919 by Ernest Maupetit; LIR label (Marseille Tourism bookshops page; Livres Hebdo 2019; house Qui sommes-nous).
Best for Marseille Tourism and Livres Hebdo call it the oldest bookshop in the city.
Visit official site ↗Marseille / France
Quartier Fraise carries children's toys and books alongside room decoration, gifts and treats in Marseille.
Best for Children's toys and books
Visit official site ↗Collingwood, Melbourne
Hares & Hyenas is a community bookshop inside the Victorian Pride Centre in St Kilda specialising in queer literature, covering fiction, biography, sex education, trans and non-binary titles and parenting books. It also stocks comics, poetry, plays, magazines, CDs, vinyl and DVDs alongside rainbow merchandise.
Best for Queer literature and community bookshop
Visit official site ↗CBD
Hill of Content is an independent Melbourne bookshop founded in 1922, with a long reputation for curated literature and nonfiction. Since 2025, the shop has traded at 1/32 Bourke Street.
Best for Bourke Street historic bookshop, curated literature, and non-fiction
Visit official site ↗Melbourne / Australia
Letterpress-printed business collateral and stationery from a Melbourne studio running century-old platen and proof presses.
Best for Letterpress-printed business collateral and stationery from a Melbourne studio running
Hungry Workshop runs a working letterpress operation out of Brunswick East, Melbourne, printing on vintage equipment that includes an Asbern proof press dating to around 1960 and a Chandler & Price platen press over a century old — real, named, dated machinery rather than a generic claim of "vintage presses." The studio's own framing of its work is compact: "We make things that are not only seen, but felt," a line that ties directly to letterpress's tactile, debossed-impression signature.
Its service list runs from business cards, packaging and invitations through swing tags, gift certificates, notebooks and coasters, with custom letterpress projects produced for what the studio describes as "design-conscious brands, creatives and individuals who care deeply about the details." Hungry Workshop also runs small-group letterpress workshops (four to eight people) at the Brunswick East studio, and lists collaborations with makers across other trades — chefs, bakers, tailors — commissioning printed goods, which points to an active commercial-production practice rather than a hobby space kept open mainly for classes.
The business is contactable directly (listed phone and email, appointment-based hours), and its stock in trade is letterpress and closely allied finishing techniques — foil stamping, embossing — rather than digital printing with letterpress as an occasional add-on. That combination of dated working presses, a production-first service list, and a real Melbourne address supports treating it as a dedicated letterpress print house.
Visit official site ↗CBD
Melbourne CBD bookshop on Bourke Street operating since the late 1960s, known for densely packed shelves and late hours (open to 11.30pm Friday and Saturday); runs a free monthly author Salon Series downstairs at the Bard's Apothecary.
Best for Literary paperbacks, poetry and independent presses
The Paperback Bookshop has operated at the quiet end of Bourke Street in Melbourne's CBD since the late 1960s - co-owner Rosy Morton, who has owned the shop since 2000, dates its founding to either 1968 or 1969. It originally stocked paperback editions of Australian and international titles and has since broadened into a wide range of fiction, classics, travel and art books, packed densely enough into the small space that browsing the whole shop takes only minutes. The Paperback Bookshop also runs a free monthly Salon Series, inviting authors to discuss recent releases at the Bard's Apothecary space downstairs.
Visit official site ↗Zetta Florence
Hidden GemFitzroy / Online
Melbourne stationery design studio and store producing archival products, journals, paper goods and personalised in-house stationery.
Best for Collectible stationery since 1989 — cards, notebooks, handmade paper, wax seals, ribbons
Visit official site ↗Nuevo León 115, Condesa, Cuauhtémoc, 06140 Ciudad de México / Mexico City / Mexico
El Péndulo opened in Condesa in 1993 as a combined café and bookstore, incorporating records, art films, concerts, book presentations and literary courses from the outset.
Best for Books, records, art films and literary events in Condesa.
Visit official site ↗Córdoba 25, Roma Norte, Cuauhtémoc, 06700 Ciudad de México / Mexico City / Mexico
Founded in 2012 by Rafael Prieto and Jorge de la Garza, Casa Bosques is an independent Roma Norte bookshop focused on 20th- and 21st-century art publications, spanning photography, architecture, design, ceramics and culinary culture.
Best for Art books spanning photography, architecture, design and ceramics.
Visit official site ↗Librería Porrúa
Hidden GemCentro Histórico, Mexico City / Online
The Porrúa brothers opened beside the Zócalo in 1900 and built Mexico's bookselling and publishing dynasty — the Sepan Cuantos classics, shops across the country, and the famous glass bookstore in Chapultepec park.
Best for Mexico’s bookselling dynasty since 1900
Visit official site ↗Miguel Ángel de Quevedo 121, Chimalistac, Álvaro Obregón, 01050 Ciudad de México / Mexico City / Mexico
Librerías Gandhi Mauricio Achar traces the Gandhi bookshop to June 1971 on Miguel Ángel de Quevedo. Production is associated with Mexico, while the range centers on independent books, magazines and paper goods.
Best for Books from a shop founded in June 1971 on Miguel Ángel de Quevedo.
Visit official site ↗Books & Books
Hidden GemCoral Gables, Miami
Mitchell Kaplan's Coral Gables courtyard bookstore grew into Miami's literary living room — readings, café tables and rooms of carefully chosen shelves. An independent that shaped a city's reading life.
Best for Miami’s great independent bookstore
Visit official site ↗Dalé Zine
Hidden GemDesign District (50 NE 40 St) / Online
Independent Miami art-book shop, gallery and publisher focused on zines, artist books, editions and local creative culture.
Best for Community-oriented art bookshop and gallery — independent printing and publishing since 2009
Visit official site ↗5919 NE 2nd Avenue, Miami, FL 33137 / Miami / United States
Jan Mapou founded Libreri Mapou in 1990 from a Caribbean Marketplace booth; Hyperallergic prints the later door at 5919 NE 2nd Avenue.
Best for A shop founded from a Caribbean Marketplace booth in 1990.
Visit official site ↗Fratelli Bonvini
Heritage HouseMilano / Via Bonvini
Milan stationery-printing shop opened 9 July 1909 by brothers Costante and Luigia Bonvini in the Corso Lodi/San Luigi district, and restored to working order in 2014 with its original treadle press, 1930s Imperia platen press and wooden type drawers intact. Today it operates as a working letterpress and bookbindery, running typography and traditional paper workshops.
Best for Working 1909 Milan letterpress shop and bookbindery with original presses
Fratelli Bonvini opened as a stationery shop on 9 July 1909, when siblings Costante and Luigia Bonvini set up along Corso Lodi in Milan's then-industrial San Luigi district. The business quickly expanded into printing to serve the growing neighborhood, turning out everything from letterheads to price lists on machinery that included a late-19th-century treadle press, a 1930 Imperia platen press and a 1950s Heidelberg Stella -- all still on site today. Costante's daughter Leila Bonvini and her husband Luigi Cambieri kept the family workshop running for decades afterward.
In 2014, the associates of FBM S.r.l. carried out a conservative restoration of the premises at Via Tagliamento 1, preserving the original layout, printing machines, bookbinding equipment and wooden typographic drawers rather than converting the space. Bonvini 1909 reopened as a working shop and cultural venue combining a functioning letterpress, a bookbindery and gallery space for exhibitions.
The workshop today runs typography and bookbinding services alongside courses -- including a paste-paper (carta colla) workshop teaching the centuries-old technique for decorating book endpapers and covers -- positioning Bonvini 1909 as one of Milan's few surviving working print-and-bindery botteghe rather than a museum piece.
Visit official site ↗Libreria Bocca
Heritage HouseGalleria Vittorio Emanuele II 12, Milan / Online
The Bocca bookselling house began in Turin in 1775; its surviving Milan branch trades under the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.
Best for Art books beneath the Galleria dome.
Visit official site ↗Milan / Online
Moleskine was founded in 1997 as a modern successor to the little black notebook tradition associated with writers and artists including Bruce Chatwin and Ernest Hemingway. Today the brand sells notebooks, planners and related paper goods worldwide.
Best for The classic notebook and city guides.
Visit official site ↗Pettinaroli
Heritage HouseMilan / Online
Historic Milan paper specialist selling antique prints, maps, stationery, notebooks and paper-based decorative objects. founded 1881 after Francesco Pettinaroli moved from Lake Orta to Milan, first beside Galleria Vittorio Emanuele; now on Via Brera.
Best for Historic handcrafted stationery and notebooks; traditional Milanese paper craft heritage
Visit official site ↗Missoula / United States
Fact & Fiction is a long-running independent bookstore on North Higgins Avenue in downtown Missoula, with a lively schedule of readings, signings, and book clubs. It highlights local and regional authors and sells books, merch, and gift cards in the shop and online.
Best for Bookstore, Books, Local Authors, Gifts
Visit official site ↗Montevideo
Babilonia Libros sells new and used books from its Montevideo storefront, spanning classics and bestsellers. The shop keeps a notable stock of art books and collector's editions.
Best for New and used books from a Montevideo bookshop with a notable stock
Visit Instagram ↗Cordón
Escaramuza is a bookstore-café in Montevideo's Cordón neighborhood, open daily except Sunday. Alongside new releases it stocks vinyl records and gourmet pantry goods, and publishes its own culture magazine, Intervalo.
Best for New books, vinyl records and gourmet pantry goods
Escaramuza runs as a hybrid bookstore and café at the corner of Pablo de María and Charrúa in Montevideo's Cordón neighborhood, open Monday through Saturday from 9am to 9pm. Its catalog splits across categories that go beyond a typical general bookshop: literary fiction, social science, gastronomy, gender studies, children's and young-adult titles, poetry, comics and manga, and a curated vinyl record section under 'Discos y vinilos.' A pantry line, Alacena, sells specialty coffee, oils and honeys, teas, and juices alongside the books, positioning the shop as a place to browse and eat rather than pass through quickly. Beyond retail, Escaramuza runs a full program of Talleres, workshops spanning children's and teen writing, illustration, literary analysis, languages, and ongoing reading clubs, plus an events calendar covering author talks and cultural programming around Montevideo. The shop also publishes Revista Intervalo, an in-house culture magazine covering book reviews, translation, columns, a podcast, and video content, extending its identity from retailer to independent publisher. A forthcoming 'Escuela de Formación Librera,' a bookseller training school, is set to begin its first modules later this year, another sign the shop positions itself as an institution for the local book trade rather than a single storefront.
Visit official site ↗Pocitos, Montevideo
Isadora Libros: gran catálogo de novedades y papelería creativa. Compra online fácil, envíos rápidos a Uruguay e internacionales.
Best for Books
Visit official site ↗Centro
Puro Verso is an independent Montevideo bookshop in a historic central building. Its Instagram profile is the available first-party source for current releases, events, opening hours and the confirmed address.
Best for Books in a historic central Montevideo building
Pocitos, Montevideo
Libros de la Arena ships books throughout Uruguay and internationally. The shop states it offers all books, every day of the year.
Best for Books shipped throughout uruguay and worldwide
Visit official site ↗Pocitos, Montevideo
Located at Av. Brasil 2561 corner Brito del Pino in Montevideo, this shop sells books, DVDs and vinyl records and is open Monday to Friday 9am to 12pm and 3 to 8pm, and Saturdays 10am to 2pm. It also hosts literary workshops, seminars and author events.
Best for Books dvds and vinyl records
Visit official site ↗Montevideo / Uruguay / Online
A Montevideo bookshop known for its wide selection of books and stationery. Titles can be browsed in the shop or bought through its online store.
Best for Bookstore, stationery, books
Visit official site ↗Librairie Drawn & Quarterly
Hidden GemMile End (Rue Bernard) / Online
Independent Montreal bookshop connected to the Drawn & Quarterly publisher, specialising in graphic novels, literature and independent publishing.
Best for Graphic novels, literature and independent publishing
Visit official site ↗469 Rue Milton, Montreal, QC H2X 1W3 / Montreal / Canada
Adrian King-Edwards and Lucille Friesen opened the Milton Street shop in 1975; The Main (updated 2026-05-06) still lists 469 Rue Milton and the 1975 start.
Best for A Milton Street shop opened by Adrian King-Edwards and Lucille Friesen in 1975.
Visit official site ↗Biblio-Globus
Worth a DetourMoscow / Russia
Biblio-Globus is a landmark Moscow bookshop on Myasnitskaya near Lubyanka, carrying more than 200,000 titles and running a busy programme of author talks and book launches. Open daily, it pairs a deep general catalogue with board games, stationery and regular in-store events.
Best for Bookstore, books, stationery
Visit official site ↗Moscow / Russia / Online
The Moskva bookshop sells printed and electronic books alongside antiquarian editions, stationery and gifts, with delivery across Russia from its online store. A team of reader-advisers curates the shelves, with particular strength in regional and hard-to-find titles.
Best for Bookstore, books, stationery, gifts
Visit official site ↗Multan / Pakistan
Chapter2 in Multan sells stationery and home décor items from a physical store at Citi Mall.
Best for Stationery and home décor supplies
Visit official site ↗34 K. Dubash Marg, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai 400023 / Mumbai / India
The Hindu (2016-06-18) dates Chetana Book Centre to September 1946, founded by Sudhakar Dikshit and writer Raja Rao at Kala Ghoda.
Best for A Kala Ghoda book centre dating to 1946.
Visit official site ↗45/47 M. G. Road, Ground Floor, Somaiya Bhavan, Fort, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400001, India / Mumbai / India
Kitab Khana is an independent fixed-door bookseller with multilingual and specialist stock. Production is associated with India, while the range centers on independent books, magazines and paper goods.
Best for Multilingual and specialist books from an independent bookseller.
Visit official site ↗Bandra West, Mumbai
Title Waves is an independent bookshop at St Paul Media Complex on Rd Number 24 in Bandra West, Mumbai, selling fiction, non-fiction, children's and young adult books, comics and regional titles. It also hosts an events section for book launches and author signings.
Best for Independent bookshop with author events
Visit official site ↗Altstadt (Kornmarkt)
Clemens Bellut runs this independent bookshop on the Kornmarkt, stocking curated philosophy, poetry, art and science titles rather than mass-market fiction. The shop doubles as a space for readings and conversation and publishes a twice-yearly literary journal, Die Wiederholung.
Best for Philosophy, poetry and arts titles
Visit official site ↗Buchhandlung Lentner
Heritage HouseMunich / Germany
Buchhandlung Lentner has sold books in Munich for over 328 years and runs its online catalogue of some four million titles alongside branches at Marienplatz, in Haidhausen and in Neubiberg. Customers can order online for next-day collection, and each shop lists its own phone line for special book requests.
Best for Bookshop, click-and-collect
Visit official site ↗Gärtnerplatzviertel
Munich's dedicated crime-fiction bookshop, at Corneliusstrasse 31 in the Gartnerplatzviertel; operating since 2000, it stocks mystery and crime titles, plus regional Alpine crime fiction, and regularly hosts author readings.
Best for A specialist crime-fiction bookshop.
Glatteis is a specialist crime-fiction bookshop in Munich's Gartnerplatzviertel, at Corneliusstrasse 31, near the corner of Baaderstrasse. The shop has been operating under this name since 2000 and focuses exclusively on crime and mystery fiction, from Alpine regional whodunits to short-story collections, alongside related cookbooks, comics, and calendars. It regularly hosts author readings, often paired with wine and bread, including charity events tied to World Book Day. A 2008 obituary credits Gabriele Fauser as the shop's founder; the business appears to have continued operating under new stewardship since her death.
Visit official site ↗Altstadt
This Marienplatz café sits inside a branch of Hugendubel, the German bookstore chain that has traded since 1893 and remains family-run five generations later. Alongside books, it offers coffee, reading areas, and tolino e-readers.
Best for Coffee, books and reading nooks at Marienplatz
This Marienplatz café operates inside a branch of Hugendubel, the German bookstore chain founded in 1893 and still, more than 130 years later, run by the same family — currently siblings Nina and Maximilian Hugendubel in its fifth generation. The company operates more than 100 branches across Germany with roughly 1,600 employees, selling books, eBooks, audiobooks, toys, calendars, stationery, and film alongside its tolino e-readers. That last detail is a real distinguishing fact rather than a footnote: Hugendubel co-founded the tolino alliance, a shared German digital-reading platform the company describes as internationally unique, giving customers access to more than three million eBook titles through a device sold at its own counters. The Marienplatz café slots into that broader identity as the pause button on a bookstore visit — a coffee and a reading area inside a business built, at its core, on getting people to sit down with a book rather than browse and leave. It's not a standalone specialty roaster chasing single-origin lots; it's a café attached to one of Germany's oldest and largest family booksellers, where the draw is the shelves as much as the cup, and where the till behind the counter is backed by a company old enough to have outlasted most of its original competitors twice over.
Visit official site ↗Munich
An independent children’s book, toy and craft-supply shop focused on durable and sustainable products. A Schwabing institution operating since 1956.
Best for Durable, sustainable children's books, toys, and craft supplies since 1956
Kunst und Spiel was founded by Michael Peter, who began not with a shop but with an exhibition space on the third floor of his own apartment building on Georgenstrasse in Munich's Schwabing district. His guiding principle was selective: toys and materials chosen according to pedagogical and ecological criteria drawn from Waldorf education, at a time when mass-produced plastic toys imported from the United States were rapidly displacing wooden and natural-material toys across the German market. The apartment exhibition drew enthusiastic support from people connected to the Waldorf School movement, the Anthroposophical Society, and the Christian Community, and on the strength of that response Peter opened a small ground-floor shop two years later, in September 1956, at Leopoldstrasse 48 -- the address the store still occupies. That continuity makes Kunst und Spiel one of Schwabing's longer-running independent retailers, predating the district's transformation into one of Munich's best-known shopping and nightlife quarters. The shop has held to its founding premise across seven decades: durable, ecologically considered children's books, toys, and craft materials, sold from the same Leopoldstrasse address it moved into shortly after opening, at a moment when that emphasis on natural materials ran directly against, rather than with, the prevailing toy-industry trend.
Visit official site ↗Altstadt
Trading since 1698, when Johann Hibler founded the shop later renamed for Joseph Lentner, who took it over in 1784, this Munich bookstore was named a royal Bavarian court supplier in 1897 and today occupies the ground floor of the Neues Rathaus at Marienplatz, specializing in Bavarica, art and philosophy.
Best for A historic Munich bookshop and former royal purveyor since 1698
Lentner traces its trading history to 1698, when Johann Hibler opened a bookshop in Munich. Joseph Lentner took over the firm in 1784 and gave it the name it still carries. The business later passed to Ernst Siegfried Stahl, under whose ownership the shop received an appointment in 1897 as königlich-bayerischer Hoflieferant — royal Bavarian court supplier — periodically furnishing the Wittelsbach royal house with new reading material. That court connection makes Lentner one of the oldest continuously trading bookshops in what was the Kingdom of Bavaria, and it is documented as the oldest surviving bookstore in Old Bavaria. The shop today occupies historic rooms on the ground floor of Munich's Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall) at Marienplatz 8, on Weinstraße. Its current stock is built around Bavarica — books on Munich and Bavarian history, culture and politics — alongside philosophy, art, theology, and facsimile reproductions of medieval illuminated manuscripts and rare book art, a specialty that connects it to the antiquarian side of its centuries-long trade.
Visit official site ↗Altstadt
Independent Munich bookshop at Rumfordstrasse 48, run by Regina Moths since 1994; curates fiction, art, design, and nonfiction with no bestseller racks, and hosts readings and exhibitions.
Best for Carefully selected literary fiction and nonfiction
Literatur Moths is an independent bookshop at Rumfordstrasse 48 in Munich, near the Isartor, run by owner Regina Moths since 1994. Moths describes her shop less as a conventional retailer than as a changing backdrop for books, graphics, and events, curating a selection she calls 'finely sieved' rather than stocking mass-market bestsellers. The inventory is organized into idiosyncratic sections spanning novels and poetry, art and history, design and graphics, comics and graphic novels, and general nonfiction. Beyond selling books, the shop functions as a small cultural venue, hosting author readings, exhibitions, and literary events. It is regularly cited by local guides as among Munich's most distinctive bookshops, credited for its window displays and hands-on staff recommendations.
Visit official site ↗Maxvorstadt
Munich independent English-language bookshop in the university quarter since 1985 — 10,000 titles and a reading cafe.
Best for English-language books in Munich's university quarter
Words' Worth opened in 1985 as an independent English-language bookshop in Munich's Maxvorstadt district, near the Neue Pinakothek and at the heart of the university quarter. Located at Schelling Strasse 3 within the humanities building of Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU), it is accessible via U-Bahn lines 3 or 6 (Universität stop). The shop maintains approximately 10,000 titles arranged across fiction and non-fiction sections. The fiction section emphasizes contemporary and classic literature from the UK, USA, and other English-speaking countries with equal weight. The non-fiction collection focuses on literary history, music, philosophy, biographies, and related subjects. Words' Worth features an integrated café serving a variety of beverages and light snacks, creating an ideal space for leisurely browsing and reading. The bookshop regularly hosts literary readings and other literary events, fostering a community of English-language readers and writers in Munich.
Official site not recordedAmazon ↗
Mystic Connecticut / United States
Bank Square Books is an independent bookstore in downtown Mystic, stocking new releases, staff picks and preorders and hosting author talks, storytimes and book clubs. Shoppers can buy in store or order print books, audiobooks and gift cards through its online shop.
Best for Staff picks, author talks, and storytimes at a downtown Mystic indie bookstore
Visit official site ↗CBD, Nairobi
Attic Books, on the first floor of Pioneer Kimathi Street in Nairobi's CBD, stocks more than 20,000 titles across fiction, non-fiction, children's literature, African literature, comics and reference works, plus computer accessories. It offers same-day delivery within Nairobi for orders placed before 2pm and is open Monday-Saturday 8am-7pm.
Best for New and second-hand books
Visit official site ↗CBD / Sasa Mall, Moi Avenue, Nairobi
Book Buzz KE is an online bookstore serving Nairobi with hard copies priced from Kshs 450 and PDFs from Kshs 50, delivering within 12-24 hours with in-store pickup available.
Best for Affordable books with fast delivery
Nairobi / Yaya Centre, Kilimani
Kenya's great independent bookshop since 1989 — Chan Bahal's two floors above Kilimani stock everything from Kenyan fiction and East African history to foreign periodicals, and Nairobi's writers treat it as a clubhouse. The place to find the literature of the region at its source.
Best for East African literature from the shop that champions it.
Visit official site ↗Nairobi
Half Priced Books sells Africana, biographies, fiction, business, cookbooks, children's books and stationery across five Nairobi-area branches including Bihi Towers, Lavington Mall, Village Market Mall, Crossroads Mall Karen and Imaara Mall.
Best for Second-hand and discounted books
Visit official site ↗Nairobi
Kibanga Books, on the 5th floor of Corner House on Kimathi Street, sells Kenyan and African books across fiction, non-fiction, personal development and business categories, plus bookmarks, and runs book clubs and an official vendors program.
Best for Kenyan and african books
Visit official site ↗Westlands, Nairobi
Lulu Kitololo Studio, made in Kenya, sells vibrant African stationery and art goods including art prints, calendars, tea towels, fridge magnets and notebooks, organized into collections such as Ocean Vibes and Swahili Phrases. Prices range from KSh1,000 to KSh12,500, and the studio also offers branding services through Studio Njano.
Best for Hand-drawn african stationery and art prints
Visit official site ↗Ngong Road, Nairobi
Soma Nami Books, with locations at Greenhouse Mall on Ngong Road and Coricom House on Ngara Road in Nairobi, stocks African literature, fiction, children's books and business titles, and offers a book cafe, book box service and book club. It began as a book review blog and now hosts the African Book Fair and Nairobi Litfest, open Monday-Saturday 9am-6pm.
Best for African literature and book club subscriptions
Visit official site ↗Nairobi
Telios Bookstore, based in Nairobi and open Monday-Friday 10am-4pm, specializes in Christian books by African authors across fiction, non-fiction and children's genres, sold as paperback and e-books priced KES350 to KES900. It holds a 4.9-star rating from 30 reviews and runs an "Author's Eden" program for self-publishing authors.
Best for Christian books by african authors
Visit official site ↗Two Rivers / Ruaka, Nairobi
Text Book Centre stocks stationery, toys, books, art supplies, cards and gifts, and technology products. It offers free delivery on orders over KSh 5,000, international delivery, and in-store collection.
Best for Books stationery toys and gifts
Visit official site ↗Nelson / New Zealand
A locally owned independent bookshop on Trafalgar Street in Nelson, Page & Blackmore stocks new fiction and non-fiction and runs a loyalty scheme and events. Titles can be browsed in-store or bought through its online shop.
Best for Books, bookshop
Visit official site ↗New Orleans / United States
Founded in 1988 in the New Orleans French Quarter, Faulkner House Books occupies a Pirate's Alley building once home to William Faulkner and specializes in fine literature and rare editions. The intimate shop is open daily and buys and sells rare, signed and out-of-print books.
Best for Bookstore, rare books, fine literature
Visit official site ↗Lake Placid, New York
An independent, locally owned and operated bookshop that has served Lake Placid for over 40 years, stocking an extensive run of Adirondack and regional titles alongside children's books and general fiction. It also carries art supplies, filling the town's only combined book-and-art-materials shop.
Best for Adirondack titles, general books and art supplies
Visit official site ↗SoHo & Nolita, Manhattan
Sarah McNally opened the original Prince Street shop in December 2004. Five stores later, it still runs its own publishing imprint, McNally Editions.
Best for Books and staff recommendations at the SoHo branch
Sarah McNally opened the first McNally Jackson Books on Prince Street in SoHo in December 2004, building the store around curated, staff-driven selection rather than a big-box inventory model — the kind of shop where a "Staff Picks" shelf carries real weight in what sells. The approach scaled further than most independent bookstores manage: McNally Jackson now runs five locations across the city — SoHo, Williamsburg, Seaport, Downtown Brooklyn, and Rockefeller Center — each keeping its own curated sections rather than a single centralized buying list.
The store also publishes under its own imprint, McNally Editions, putting the bookstore on the other side of the business it's spent two decades curating for. Signed copies, a Reader Rewards program, and dedicated kids' and YA sections round out a format built less around volume than around the idea that a bookstore's judgment — what it chooses to stock and promote — is itself the product.
Visit official site ↗Northshire Bookstore
Hidden GemBroadway, downtown Saratoga Springs, New York
Northshire Bookstore anchors Broadway with a deep curated selection, staff picks and frequent author events, as a companion to the original Manchester, Vermont store. Gifts sit alongside the books on its shelves.
Best for Books, gifts, author events
Visit official site ↗Strand Book Store
Heritage HouseNew York / 828 Broadway at 12th St
Strand Book Store combines new titles with used and rare books at its Broadway shop near East 12th Street. Benjamin Bass founded the business on Fourth Avenue in 1927, before the move to its present Broadway location in 1957. The mix gives readers room to compare recent publications with older editions across a broad selection of subjects.
Best for New, used and rare books near Union Square
Visit official site ↗1-8-35 Namba, Chuo Ward, Osaka
Japanese stationery and furniture showroom — beautifully designed notebooks, organisers, and office supplies. The 'Campus' notebook was born here.
Best for Notebooks, organisers, and office supplies, birthplace of the Campus notebook
Visit official site ↗Karl Johans gate 2, entrance Fred Olsens gate, 0154 Oslo, Norway / Oslo / Norway
Samtiden (reprinting Klassekampen): new independent shop on Karl Johan by publisher Martin Berdahl (Kontur) with Lars Undli and Pål Sandbæk, against a decade that lost ~100 Norwegian bookshops. VisitOSLO: independent bookstore next to Oslo S.
Best for Independent books and paper goods.
Visit official site ↗Bernt Ankers gate 4, 0183 Oslo, Norway / Oslo / Norway
Independent bookshop at Bernt Ankersgt. 4 whose owners buy stock themselves (including first editions) and refuse chain bestsellers. VisitOSLO independently: curated new, used and antiquarian titles plus vinyl and signed prints.
Best for Owner-selected new, used and antiquarian books, vinyl and signed prints.
Visit official site ↗Rathkes gate 7A, enter from Jens Bjelkes gate, 0558 Oslo, Norway / Oslo / Norway
Official + Dagsavisen + DaGama: Norway's first dedicated photobook shop, opened May 2025 by photographers Massimo Leardini and Hans-Olav Forsang as a walk-in for The Photo Book press plus other publishers and collector copies.
Best for Official + Dagsavisen + DaGama: Norway's first dedicated photobook shop, opened May 2025 by photographers.
Visit official site ↗Rathkes gate 7b, 0558 Oslo, Norway / Oslo / Norway
Dagsavisen: English-language neighbour of Svovel at Rathkes gate 7b; new and used stock, monthly book swap. DaGama interviews owner Indigo Trigg-Hauger: personal-algorithm inventory, used-book trade-in, events.
Best for Independent books and paper goods.
Visit official site ↗Schous Plass 7A, 0552 Oslo, Norway / Oslo / Norway
Official: established 2016 on Grünerløkka; new and used books. Dagsavisen: antikvariat at Schous plass 7a with deep chairs and staff recommendations. DaGama independently prints the same 2016 / Schous Plass 7A door.
Best for Independent books and paper goods.
Visit official site ↗Rathkes gate 7B, 0558 Oslo, Norway / Oslo / Norway
Universitas: Norway's only pure children's bookshop; quality/diversity/pleasure; Ellen and Agnes hand-pick every title. Dagsavisen: Norges eneste rene barnebokhandel at Rathkes gate 7b.
Best for Norway's only pure children's bookshop.
Visit official site ↗Oslo / Norway
Record shop with vinyl, CDs, cassettes, books and merchandise. The current official page lists Bernt Ankers Gate 10A.
Visit official site ↗Universitetsgata 12, 0164 Oslo, Norway / Oslo / Norway
Founded 1973; Culture Trip (and Universitas) treat it as the independent alternative to Norway's chain bookstores, with what Culture Trip calls probably Norway's best-assorted cartoon section.
Best for An independent alternative to Norway's chain bookstores, founded in 1973.
Visit official site ↗Oslo / Norway
TS Bokbinderi, at Torggata 36b in central Oslo, describes itself directly as "a hand bookbindery located in Oslo" that binds, repairs, and restores books using traditional techniques.
Best for Hand bookbinding and restoration by appointment in Copenhagen
TS Bokbinderi, at Torggata 36b in central Oslo, describes itself directly as "a hand bookbindery located in Oslo" that binds, repairs, and restores books using traditional techniques. The workshop's own account of its sewing method is specific: books are hand-sewn on tape with a shirting spine and hidden corners, a construction detail that only a bindery actually doing the work by hand would state at that level of specificity.
Alongside repair and restoration commissions, the bindery makes its own signature product — a lined hardcover notebook with agate-marble covers in blue, green, and brown, priced at 1,250 kr on its own site — deliberately designed, per the workshop, to evoke the look of heirloom household ledgers rather than a contemporary stationery product. That combination — commissioned repair work plus a standing retail line made in-house — is a coherent, verifiable business model rather than two unrelated claims stitched together.
The site gives no founding date or ownership history, and none was found independently; the workshop operates by appointment only rather than fixed retail hours, consistent with a small hand-operation rather than a shopfront business.
Visit official site ↗Ottawa / Canada
Perfect Books is a carefully curated independent bookshop on Elgin Street in Ottawa, stocking new fiction and non-fiction for the passionate reader. It sells titles and its own tote bags through an online shop and in store, open seven days a week.
Best for Curated new fiction, nonfiction and tote bags
Visit official site ↗Ottawa / Canada
The Papery is a stationery shop in Ottawa's Glebe since 1986, curating greeting cards, journals, Traveler's notebooks, fountain pens, inks and Japanese papers. Its website showcases the range and online ordering is briefly paused for a refresh while the shop sells its full selection in store.
Best for Stationery, paper, fountain pens, notebooks
Visit official site ↗Paris / Online
Adeline Klam sells Japanese paper, origami supplies, stationery and decorative craft materials from Paris. Workshops and kits help beginners understand folding and paper choice before investing in larger quantities.
Best for Japanese papers, origami, and stationery workshops
Visit official site ↗Paris / Online
Paris bookshop and publisher continuing the work of Section 7 Books, formerly a department of the independent space castillo/corrales (2007-2015, Belleville); in its 10th-arrondissement premises since 2019, stocking artists' books, essays and zines from independent publishers.
Best for Contemporary and critical art books from an independent Paris publisher
After 8 Books traces its origins to a single bookshelf inside castillo/corrales, an independent project space active in Paris's Belleville neighborhood from 2007 to 2015. That space's book program operated as Section 7 Books; After 8 Books continues that work under its own name and has occupied its current premises in the 10th arrondissement since 2019. The shop works with independent publishers and authors to sell monographs, artists' books, catalogues, essays, novels, non-fiction and zines. Its founders describe the bookstore less as a simple point of sale than as a social space -- somewhere to receive not just boxes of books but the practices and ways of working those books represent, filling gaps they felt weren't otherwise being addressed. Beyond the Paris shop, After 8 Books curated Croissant, a bookshop housed inside the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, running that project from 2018 until 2024. The shop also distributes titles through the D.A.P./Artbook network and appears at art-book fairs including Paris Internationale.
Visit official site ↗Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Paris
Slipcased travel and fashion volumes made to sit out rather than be shelved, from the Faubourg Saint-Honore shop.
Best for Slipcased luxury travel and fashion books that double as decor
Visit official site ↗Paris / Online
Paris engraving house founded in 1880 by Emile Benneton in the Madeleine quarter, now at 75 Boulevard Malesherbes; hand-engraves prestige stationery and calling cards, with craftspeople recognized as Meilleurs Ouvriers de France.
Best for Engraved stationery and heirloom correspondence.
Benneton Graveur is a Paris engraving house founded in 1880 by Emile Benneton in the Madeleine quarter, historically supplying prestige stationery to European royal courts and the era's social elite. The house is now based at 75 Boulevard Malesherbes in the 8th arrondissement and continues to produce hand-engraved stationery using traditional engraving tools and dies; its craftspeople hold Meilleurs Ouvriers de France status.
Visit official site ↗Canal Saint-Martin
Independent bookshop and magazine shop at 26 Rue du Chateau d'Eau near the Canal Saint-Martin, Paris, opened in 2021 by Julien Achard, specializing in independent art, design and fanzine publishing.
Best for Independent magazines, fanzines, and niche design books
Cahier Central is a bookshop at 26 Rue du Chateau d'Eau in Paris's 10th arrondissement, roughly midway between Place de la Republique and the Canal Saint-Martin. Opened in 2021 by founder Julien Achard, the shop specializes in independent publishing - art, design, music, ecology and contemporary feminism among its recurring subjects - stocking magazines, fanzines and posters from small and underrepresented publishers.
Visit official site ↗Paris / Online
Paris paper-art boutique and gallery at 6 Rue du Pont Louis Philippe in the Marais (the 'Rue du Papier'), opened 1979 by Ann Barth as an alternative to conventional stationers. Now run by Vanessa Barth and Marcel Zuger, mixing notebooks and correspondence stationery with work by paper artists and engravers.
Best for French notebooks, fountain pens and serious desk tools
Calligrane was founded in 1979 by Ann Barth, who first opened a Calligrane papeterie in Cannes before establishing the Paris shop at 6 Rue du Pont Louis Philippe in the Marais's 4th arrondissement, nicknamed the 'Rue du Papier.' The shop devotes gallery space to paper artists, engravers and sculptors, hosting exhibitions of their work through the year. It carries notebooks, correspondence stationery, Japanese washi paper, custom printing and small-batch handcrafted paper objects. When founder Ann Barth died in 2011, the business passed to Vanessa Barth and her husband Marcel Zuger, who continue to run it with the same emphasis on discovering and showcasing paper artists.
Visit official site ↗Delamain
Heritage HouseParis / Online
Paris bookshop dating to 1708 near the Palais-Royal; relocated to 155 rue Saint-Honore in 1906 after a fire, owned by Gallimard since 1986. About 25,000 titles across literature, art and history in a 90 sqm space.
Best for Literature, art books, and gifts at a historic bookshop near the Palais
Librairie Delamain traces its origins to 1708, when it was established at the Palais-Royal by Andre Cailleau, making it one of the oldest bookshops in Paris still operating. A fire at the neighboring Comedie-Francaise theater forced a move in 1906 to its current address at 155 rue Saint-Honore. The shop has been owned by publishing house Gallimard since 1986. Within its compact 90-square-meter space, Delamain stocks roughly 25,000 titles spanning literature, art, history, science and the humanities. The shop has literary associations dating back generations: writers including Guy de Maupassant and Michel Foucault are recorded as having frequented it.
Visit official site ↗Paris
Delfonics is a Japanese stationery brand whose Paris selection brings notebooks and diaries together with albums and writing accessories. Its approach treats stationery as practical equipment for organising a day or recording ideas, with design central to the choice. The range offers paper goods for personal use as well as compact gifts for people who enjoy writing.
Best for Japanese notebooks, diaries and paper gifts in Paris
Delfonics is a stationery company built around the idea that a pen or sheet of paper can become an entry point into culture. Its official philosophy argues that stationery should remain practical while also releasing the user's sensibility and creativity. That position appears in the product structure. Delfonics develops original items, store-limited releases and collaborations, while Rollbahn and Smith provide two recognisable lines within the wider range. Notebooks, diaries and carrying cases sit beside tools for organizing a desk or bag. The company compares choosing stationery with choosing a book, music or a film, treating taste as part of function rather than as surface decoration. Its GALLERY and Journal material extend that editorial role by placing products beside exhibitions and makers alongside working practices. The company profile grounds Delfonics in a specific design and publishing environment. The merchant's distinction extends beyond the number of notebook formats. It is the deliberate connection among writing and organization alongside cultural choice, supported by named in-house lines and a programme that moves between product design and collaboration alongside presentation.
Visit official site ↗Paris / Online
Exacompta makes planners, filing systems, notebooks, cards and desk accessories for organised paper workflows. Compatible formats and refill systems matter more than decoration when building a durable stationery setup.
Best for Planners, filing systems, notebooks, cards
Visit official site ↗Paris / Online
France's culture-and-tech institution since 1954 — books, music, and electronics with the famous adhérent card.
Best for Books, tech, and French cultural gifting.
Visit official site ↗79 Rue des Archives, 75003 Paris
Dedicated to the father of modern photojournalism, this foundation in a quiet courtyard of the Marais hosts exceptional photography exhibitions.
Best for Exceptional photography exhibitions and one of Paris's best photography bookshops.
Visit official site ↗Paris / Quartier Latin / Online
Gibert Joseph is a Latin Quarter bookseller descended from Joseph Gibert. He began selling books from bouquiniste boxes on the Quai Saint-Michel in the 1880s and opened a secondhand textbook shop on the Boulevard Saint-Michel. The Gibert Joseph name dates from 1929, when the founder's elder son opened at number 30. The shop now covers several buildings on the boulevard, mixing new and secondhand books with records.
Best for Second-hand books, textbooks, and Left Bank browsing.
Gibert Joseph is a Paris bookseller whose story starts with Joseph Gibert, a former teacher of classical literature from Saint-Étienne. He arrived in Paris in the 1880s and sold books from four bouquiniste boxes on the Quai Saint-Michel opposite Notre-Dame. He then opened a shop on the Boulevard Saint-Michel dealing in secondhand school textbooks. It thrived as Jules Ferry's laws made schooling free and compulsory. After his death in 1915 his sons took over, and in 1929 they went separate ways. The elder, Joseph, opened his own shop at 30 boulevard Saint-Michel under the name Gibert Joseph. Régis kept the original quayside business as Gibert Jeune. The Gibert Joseph shop grew to six floors and spread along the boulevard to numbers 26, 30 and 34, drawing students from the nearby Sorbonne. From the 1950s it added records, then videos and stationery. A specialist record shop opened at number 34 in 1996. In 2017 Gibert Joseph took over the struggling Gibert Jeune, ending 88 years of separation. Secondhand books still make up a large share of what the company sells.
Visit official site ↗L'Écume des Pages
Worth a DetourSaint-Germain
Boulevard Saint-Germain bookshop, next to Café de Flore, opened in the early 1980s; stocks over 40,000 titles and stays open until midnight every night but Sunday.
Best for Left Bank French literature, essays, and art books
L'Écume des Pages opened on Boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris in the early 1980s, in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter next to the Café de Flore. The shop is a general-interest bookstore rather than a specialist one, carrying more than 40,000 titles across literature, essays, and art books. Its defining feature in the neighborhood is its hours: the store stays open every night except Sunday until midnight, unusual for a Paris bookshop and a draw for browsers looking for a late-evening stop after dinner in the quarter. In the summer of 2023, the store was acquired by the Bolloré group, though it continues to operate under a charter of editorial independence for its book selection. It remains one of the more visible bookshops on the Left Bank, positioned along one of Saint-Germain's main boulevards amid a concentration of other literary cafés and bookshops that has long defined the neighborhood's identity.
Visit official site ↗Paris / Online
Paris stationery brand launched in 2013 by three entrepreneurs, designing and producing notebooks, cards and paper goods in the Paris region as a deliberate stand for handwriting over all-digital habits.
Best for Notebooks, cards, calendars, and graphic paper goods
Le Papier fait de la Resistance ('paper puts up a fight') was launched in 2013 by three entrepreneurs in their thirties who wanted to make a case for handwriting in an increasingly all-digital world. The brand is based at Place des Cinq Martyrs du Lycee Buffon in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, and describes its notebooks and paper goods as designed and manufactured in the Paris region. Its signature notebook format uses a rigid, textured cover with a single elastic closure designed to work for both left- and right-handed users, wrapped around roughly 112 pages of cream-colored paper. Beyond notebooks, the catalogue extends to cards, calendars and other graphic paper goods.
Visit official site ↗Saint-Germain
Karl Lagerfeld’s bookshop — the Kaiser’s own 7L, now Chanel-kept, photography and style scholarship.
Best for Photography and style books from Karl Lagerfeld's own bookshop
Visit official site ↗Paris
Paris's technical and scientific bookstore since 1894. Six floors of books on architecture, engineering, computer science, design, and applied arts. The architecture section on the ground floo.
Best for Six floors of books on architecture, engineering, computer science, design
Visit official site ↗Librairie Galignani
Heritage HouseRue de Rivoli / 1st
Founded in Paris in 1801 by Giovanni Antonio Galignani — a family in the book trade since 1520s Venice — and at 224 rue de Rivoli since 1856, Galignani is an English-language bookshop. Six family generations on, its wood-panelled rooms hold three departments: English, French, and the Fine Arts section added when English books were banned under the Occupation.
Best for English-language books and fine-arts volumes in Paris
Visit official site ↗6 Place des Vosges, 75004 Paris
Victor Hugo's former apartment, now a free museum on the Place des Vosges. The rooms are furnished as they were during his residence, and the gift shop offers an excellent selection of literary books.
Best for Victor Hugo's former apartment on Place des Vosges — excellent literary bookshop.
Visit official site ↗Saint-Germain
Mélodies Graphiques is a Paris stationery shop focused on paper and calligraphy. It carries inks and sealing wax alongside notebooks and cards for writing projects. The shop's own calligraphy papers and selected vintage finds offer further choices for people who prefer working by hand.
Best for Paper, calligraphy supplies and sealing wax in Paris
Visit official site ↗Musée Picasso Paris
Worth a Detour5 Rue de Thorigny, 75003 Paris
The Musée Picasso Paris bookshop sits at the museum entrance in the Marais. Its shelves cover Picasso's work and modern art through exhibition catalogues and monographs, with a separate selection for younger readers. Stationery and objects in textiles or ceramics extend the selection beyond books, with ranges linked to the museum's exhibitions.
Best for Picasso books and museum-related gifts in Paris
The bookshop at the entrance to the Musée Picasso Paris is useful for visitors who want to keep reading after seeing the collection. Exhibition catalogues sit alongside monographs on Picasso, while the wider bibliography includes essays and books about modern and contemporary art. Some publications are available in English, though the language of a particular title needs checking before purchase.
The selection also reaches younger readers through books about colour and creative activities. That makes the shop a place to choose a book for a child as well as a more detailed study of an artist or exhibition. A small illustrated volume and a substantial catalogue serve quite different purposes, so browsing format and language matters as much as choosing a subject.
Beyond the books are stationery and objects in textiles or ceramics. Lines connected to exhibitions change the selection over time. The shop's strength for a visitor is the relationship between these objects and the museum's programme, rather than a promise that every item is locally made or represents an original artwork.
Visit official site ↗Ofr.
Worth a DetourHaut-Marais
Ofr Paris is a bookshop for art books, fashion publications, photography, magazines and small-press editions. Its programme of openings and events turns the Haut-Marais store into a meeting point for independent print culture.
Best for Art books, zines, and openings at the Marais' indie-print institution where fashion
Haut-Marais
Paris stationery brand founded in 2011 by Maxime Brenon and Julien Crespel, launched first as a website; notebooks and paper goods are designed in-house and manufactured locally in Paris from recycled and responsibly sourced paper.
Best for Marais stationery with recycled-stock geometric graphics, made in Paris
Papier Tigre was founded in Paris by Maxime Brenon, who came from a marketing background, and Julien Crespel, a designer who had previously run his own branding and communications agency. The label began in 2011 as a website before the founders opened a physical studio and boutique, initially based in the Marais district.
The brand's core proposition is stationery - notebooks, diaries, planners and paper accessories - designed in-house by its own team of graphic artists rather than licensed from outside designers, and manufactured locally using recycled paper and other responsibly sourced materials rather than outsourced overseas production. That local-manufacturing commitment earned Papier Tigre recognition under the "Fabrique a Paris" label, a Paris city program recognizing goods actually made within the city rather than merely designed or branded there.
The studio and workshop have since relocated from the original Marais site to the banks of the Canal Saint-Martin in the 10th arrondissement, reflecting the brand's growth from a small stationery boutique into a larger design-and-manufacturing operation, while its retail presence has continued to be associated with the Marais shopping district where it first opened.
Visit official site ↗Paris / Online
French stationery and wallpaper brand offering timeless patterns for notebooks, cards, wallpaper, and home décor with responsible French production.
Best for Notebooks, cards, calendars, and prints from a Paris stationery brand
Season Paper is a French stationery and wallpaper brand offering "motifs intemporels pour un quotidien inspirant" (timeless patterns for inspiring daily life) produced with responsible, quality French manufacturing. The company produces stationery (notebooks, journals, agendas, notepads, cards), wallpaper with various motifs including animals, florals, landscapes, and graphics, plus home décor items such as throws, gift wrapping, puzzles, and books. Season Paper operates a design studio that creates original patterns and offers seasonal collections like the "Islay" line. The brand supports both B2C e-commerce and B2B options for resellers and design professionals. Free shipping on stationery orders over €50 is available within France. The company emphasizes its commitment to responsible, French, quality production in an era of globalized manufacturing.
Visit official site ↗37 Rue de la Bûcherie, 75005 Paris
The most English-language bookstore in the world — the original was a gathering place for the Lost Generation. The current version on the Left Bank continues the tradition. Readings, workshops. Established 1951.
Best for English-language books, readings and Left Bank literary history
Visit official site ↗Saint-Germain
TASCHEN’s Saint-Germain store specialises in richly illustrated art, architecture, photography and fashion books. Standard editions sit beside oversized monographs and limited collector sets, making format and production part of the purchase.
Best for SUMO-sized monographs and collector art-book editions in Saint-Germain
Visit official site ↗6th arrondissement, paris / France
The Red Wheelbarrow occupies two addresses on rue de Médicis across from the Luxembourg Gardens, an English-language bookshop that has anchored Paris's Left Bank literary scene since opening in the Marais in 2001. Alongside its adult store at no. 11, no. 9 now houses The Red Balloon, its bilingual children's offshoot, and both host a steady calendar of author readings and poetry nights.
Best for Bookstore, independent, anglophone
Visit official site ↗Marais / Filles du Calvaire
This Marais bookshop carries art publishing and editions connected to a noted collector.
Best for Marais art publishing and limited editions from a legendary gallerist-collector
Visit official site ↗East Passyunk
A locally rooted books stationery destination in the city. A community-focused independent bookstore and event room. Established 2018.
Best for Books, stationery and independent-bookstore events
Visit official site ↗West Philadelphia
Bindlestiff Books is a volunteer-run independent bookstore in West Philadelphia, operating since 2005. Its neighborhood shelves and events emphasize independent bookselling and community access rather than a chain-store assortment.
Best for Volunteer-run neighborhood bookselling since 2005
Visit official site ↗422 South Street, Philadelphia / Online
Black and Nobel is an independent Black-owned Philadelphia bookstore and cultural center at 422 South Street. Its shelves and online shop span Black history and literature alongside health, wellness and natural products.
Best for Black history, African diaspora books, and rare titles
Visit official site ↗West Philadelphia
Hakim's Bookstore & Gift Shop on South 52nd Street in West Philadelphia specialises in books about Black history and culture. Dawud Hakim founded the shop, which later continued under his daughter Yvonne Blake. Its role as a neighbourhood gathering place is part of the story behind the historical marker awarded to the shop.
Best for Black history and cultural books in West Philadelphia
Visit official site ↗Fishtown
Harriett’s Bookshop is a Black-owned independent Philadelphia bookstore and community space opened in 2020, centered on women authors, artists and activists. Its shelves and programming make the Fishtown shop a cultural stop as well as a place to buy books, continuing the mission named for Harriet Tubman.
Best for A Black-owned independent bookstore and community space, since 2020.
Visit official site ↗Old City, Philadelphia
Used bookstore opened 1975 on South Street, Philadelphia; moved to 7 N 2nd Street in Old City in 2004. About 130,000 secondhand books plus a second-floor record room, stocked mostly from customer trade-ins.
Best for Long-running used books at this local shop
The Book Trader opened in 1975 on South Street in Philadelphia and spent nearly three decades at the corner of 5th and South before relocating in 2004 to 7 North 2nd Street, in the city's Old City neighborhood, where it remains today. The shop is a roughly 5,000-square-foot space of floor-to-ceiling used books - more than 130,000 titles across fiction and nonfiction, including rare volumes - plus a second-floor room devoted to records. Its stock comes primarily from books traded in or donated by customers rather than wholesale purchase. It is counted among Philadelphia's oldest and largest used bookstores and is open daily except Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Visit official site ↗Phoenix
Bookmans Entertainment Exchange is Arizona's long-running used bookstore and media exchange, trading in secondhand books, CDs, vinyl, video games, and collectibles. The Phoenix location hosts live in-store events promoted on its own Bookmans Phoenix pages, alongside an online storefront for browsing inventory.
Best for Used Books, Media, Games, Trade Store
Visit official site ↗Phoenix / United States
Changing Hands has sold new and used books to Phoenix and Tempe since 1974, with more than three hundred author events a year. The Camelback Road shop sells in store and online, with audiobooks and bulk education orders besides.
Best for Books, Independent Bookstore, Gifts, Merchandise
Visit official site ↗Pisa / Italy
Libreria Erasmus is an independent bookshop that has operated near Pisa's Torre since opening in December 2013, stocking fiction, poetry, and language-learning titles in Italian and a dozen other languages. The shop also hosts book presentations and poetry readings throughout the year at its Piazza Cavallotti location.
Best for Bookstore, Books, Literature
Visit official site ↗Strip District, Pittsburgh
love, Pittsburgh is a women-owned gift shop featuring over 100 local small businesses, with locations at 805 Liberty Ave downtown, 1728 Penn Ave in the Strip District, and 301 Shiloh Street in Mount Washington. The shop carries apparel, home goods, stationery and collectibles from Pittsburgh-area makers.
Best for Gifts from local pittsburgh makers
Visit official site ↗Port Arthur, Texas
The Mail Room has traded in southeast Texas for more than four decades, and the Celli family has owned it since 2002. Frank and Katie Celli took over from the first generation in 2025. The Port Arthur room at 4700 FM 365 runs a mail counter alongside a gift floor. Stock covers home decor, candles, books, kitchen goods, corporate gift baskets.
Best for Gift shopping and a working mail counter under one roof in Port Arthur.
The Mail Room has served this corner of southeast Texas for more than four decades. The Celli family has owned the business since 2002, and in 2025 the second generation took it over. Frank and Katie Celli run it now, and the counter service that built the company continues. Two rooms carry the name. The Port Arthur store sits at 4700 FM 365, and the older address stands on South Dowlen Road in Beaumont. Half of the floor is a working mail counter. It handles mailbox rental, professional packaging, bulk mail for businesses and notary work. The other half is a gift emporium arranged by department rather than by brand. Home and lifestyle goods cover decor, blankets, throws, books, candles, desk accessories, lighting, textiles, vases, planters. A kitchen section sits alongside. The buying leans on American gift houses that supply independent shops, among them Stonewall Kitchen, Voluspa, Swig, Shiraleah, Mary Square, Royal Standard and Michael Design Works. Corporate gift baskets are assembled on site for local businesses. The mixture is unusual for a town of this size. Most shipping counters do not also sell candles, and most gift shops do not hold a notary. Here the two trades share one counter staff and one family name.
Visit official site ↗516 NW 12th Avenue, Portland, OR 97209, United States / Portland / United States
Founded 1989 by Ron and Jennifer Rich; 1998 they opened the Pearl District retail space with an urban paper mill and letterpress shop behind the counter. Stationery Trends (2019) independently: retail opened 1998 in the Pearl with a view into the print shop and mill.
Best for Paper, letterpress printing and an urban mill in the Pearl District.
Visit official site ↗Vitória, Porto
A historic two-level bookshop selling Portuguese and international books in a Neo-Manueline building. The present shop building opened in 1906. Established 1881.
Best for Portuguese and international books inside a Neo-Manueline building opened in 1906
Visit official site ↗Miguel Bombarda
An independent illustration gallery and shop for prints, books and graphic art. Established 2009.
Best for Portuguese illustration, artist prints and small-edition books
Visit official site ↗Wenceslas Square
Prague bookshop on Wenceslas Square (Vodickova street), run by Academia, the publishing house of the Czech Academy of Sciences; a two-level store with a cafe, strong on Czech history, art and architecture titles plus a foreign-language section.
Best for Czech scholarship and translated literature
Academia Bookshop trades from Wenceslas Square in Prague's New Town, at an address on Vodickova street just off the square. It operates under Academia, the publishing house of the Czech Academy of Sciences, headquartered at Vodickova 40 - meaning the shop is a retail outlet of an academic-institution publisher rather than an independent bookseller. Inside, it's a two-level shop known for a cafe built into the space. The selection leans toward Czech-interest subjects plus a notably strong English-language and foreign-language section.
Visit official site ↗Vinohrady, Prague
Book Therapy selects illustrated books and reading material for its Vinohrady boutique in Prague and online shop. Its catalogue covers design and architecture as well as photography and fashion. Shoppers can browse the selection online before visiting the shop at Římská 35 or arranging collection there.
Best for Design and illustrated books at a Vinohrady boutique
Book Therapy is explicit that it is not a bookshop. It calls itself a place for choosing books that make sense, as a gift, as a gesture, as your offline therapy, and that distinction shapes everything reaching the shelves.
It does not sell thousands of titles. Each one is chosen on content, on visual quality and on whether it will still hold up in a decade. The shop works with publishers including Assouline, Taschen and Phaidon, houses it credits with defining contemporary visual culture.
There is no attempt to compete on catalogue breadth or on bestseller charts, because the shop was founded as an alternative to the mass bookseller. Its own line on this is blunt: we do not sell everything, it says, we sell only what we stand behind.
For a lot of customers that makes it the safe place to choose a gift. Two boutiques let the physical quality of a book be judged in person, and they are meant to be used alongside the online shop rather than instead of it.
Visit official site ↗Neoluxor
Hidden GemWenceslas Square
Prague's largest bookshop, a four-floor flagship of the 13-shop Luxor/Neoluxor chain on Wenceslas Square, stocking books, maps, and stationery in Czech, English, French, German, Spanish, and Russian, plus a cafe.
Best for Four floors of multilingual books, maps, stationery, records and a cafe on Wenceslas Square
Palac knih Luxor - now generally branded Neoluxor - is the flagship location of a Prague bookselling chain that operates 13 shops across the city. The flagship, on Wenceslas Square in Prague's Nove Mesto district, is spread across four floors and is described in travel and local-business sources as the largest bookstore in the Czech Republic. It carries fiction, non-fiction, travel guides, and maps across multiple languages - Czech, English, French, Spanish, German, and Russian - along with a substantial English-language section, stationery, souvenirs, and a vinyl records section. A small cafe on the first floor serves coffee and wine to browsing customers.
Visit official site ↗Letná, Prague
PageFive is a Prague bookshop and publisher specialising in visual culture, from art books to small-run printed work. Its shelves combine international publications with Czech books and magazines as well as prints and independently produced zines. The project also includes a risograph studio and MandlGallery, extending its publishing work into printing and exhibitions.
Best for Art books, zines and prints in Prague
PageFive works as both a Prague bookshop and a publisher, with visual culture running through its printed material. Art books share the range with magazines and zines, alongside prints that can be considered as objects in their own right. The stock combines international publications with Czech work, rather than treating local publishing as a separate souvenir category.
Its involvement in making books gives the project a role beyond stocking titles from other publishers. PageFive also operates a risograph studio and MandlGallery, connecting printing with a programme of exhibitions. Those activities provide context for the kinds of paper-based work sold through the shop.
For a visitor, the useful first choice is between a publication to read and a print to keep or display. A magazine or small-run zine offers a different format from a substantial art book, even when the subject overlaps. The range therefore rewards attention to the publication itself and the people making it. Particular titles change, but the relationship between bookselling and independent production remains the defining reason to consider this shop.
Visit official site ↗Holešovice, Prague
A stationery shop selling Czech-designed paper goods, conceptual products, and gifts. It received Designblok Store of the Year 2011 and Czech Grand Design Store of the Year 2012.
Best for Czech-designed paper goods and conceptual gifts
Visit official site ↗Shakespeare & Sons
Hidden GemMalá Strana
Independent English-language bookshop founded in Prague in 2002 in a former brothel in Vrsovice, later relocated near Charles Bridge in Mala Strana; over 20,000 new and used titles and a cellar events space.
Best for English new used literary events.
Shakespeare and Sons opened in Prague in 2002, in a building in the Vrsovice neighborhood that had previously been a brothel. As its book collection grew, the shop relocated to Mala Strana, close to Charles Bridge, where it now operates as one of the largest independent English-language bookstores in the city, stocking more than 20,000 new and used titles. The split-level space includes a historic basement cellar used for events - art exhibitions, live music, open mic nights. The business later expanded to Berlin, opening in Prenzlauer Berg in 2011 before settling into a Friedrichshain location on Warschauer Strasse in 2014. In Prague, the bookshop also operates alongside Fine Bagels, a bagel cafe run under the same roof.
Visit official site ↗Shakespeare & Sons Vinohrady
Hidden GemVinohrady
Independent English- and French-language bookshop in Prague's Vinohrady district, the second location of Shakespeare & Sons, founded by expats in 2003, stocking over 20,000 new and used titles with a reading area and special-order service.
Best for English fiction events coffee Vinohrady.
Shakespeare and Sons is an independent bookshop founded by expatriates in Prague in 2003, now with two locations; the Vinohrady branch operates from Korunni 1300/65, Prague 2. The shop stocks more than 20,000 new and used titles, primarily in English with a French-language section. Regular imports from the US and UK keep the English-language stock current, and the shop takes special orders for titles not already on the shelves. The Vinohrady location keeps the character of the original store: shelves lined with wine bottles and a reading area with armchairs.
Quebec City / Canada
An independent bookseller with two locations in Quebec City - rue Saint-Jean in Vieux-Quebec and rue Saint-Joseph Est in Saint-Roch - Librairie Pantoute champions Quebecois literature alongside a broad general catalog. The store runs regular author launches and sells online through its own e-commerce platform.
Best for Books, Quebec Literature
Visit official site ↗Reykjavík / Iceland
In Reykjavík, Bókin is an antiquarian bookshop stocking rare and collectible volumes.
Best for Antiquarian and rare books
Visit official site ↗Penninn Eymundsson
Heritage HouseAusturstræti, Reykjavík / Online
An Icelandic bookshop, founded 1872 — the national living room where a book-mad nation browses, sips and buys for jólabókaflóð. Every Icelander has stood in these aisles.
Best for Iceland’s bookstore since 1872
Official site not recordedAmazon ↗
Bankastræti, Reykjavík
Saga Store at Bankastræti 11 in Reykjavík sells Icelandic souvenirs and gifts including handcrafted items, clothing, food and books, and is the official reseller of Kidka Icelandic wool products. Its signature item is the Positive Potatoes, small encouraging souvenirs.
Best for Icelandic wool products and souvenirs
Visit official site ↗Riga / Latvia
Stationery and gift shop with planners, calendars, greeting cards and notebooks. The shop is the Gallery Centre branch on the second floor.
Visit official site ↗VEF Quarter, Riga
Svinam, a Riga design studio operating since 2010 offering event styling, product photography and interior design, also sells design books such as A Home Away from Home (€91), The New French Look (€46) and Clay – Journey with Nordic Clay (€51).
Best for Curated design and lifestyle books
Visit official site ↗Riga / Latvia
Music shop offering Latvian folk instruments, CDs, vinyl records and books. No second-hand classification is inferred.
Visit official site ↗Leblon
Rio bookstore opened 1979 by Dalva Gasparian on Rua Dias Ferreira in Leblon, a year after her Argumento launched in São Paulo. Known for stocking books banned under Brazil's military dictatorship; still family-run with an attached café.
Best for Brazilian literature and Leblon book browsing
Livraria Argumento was founded in São Paulo in 1978 by Dalva Gasparian, who started the bookstore partly because of the difficulty her husband, the businessman and publisher Fernando Gasparian, faced distributing books from the family's own publishing house, Paz e Terra, under Brazil's military dictatorship. The following year, in 1979, she opened a Rio de Janeiro branch, choosing Rua Dias Ferreira in Leblon, near her own home, for a small shop of just over 60 square meters.
During the years of heaviest censorship under the dictatorship (1964-1985), Argumento became known as one of the few bookstores in Rio still carrying titles considered subversive or banned, drawing students, journalists, writers and academics who could find little else, and turning the shop into an informal meeting point for a generation of Brazilian intellectuals.
In 1993 the store expanded into a new space on the same street, adding CDs and DVDs to its stock and opening an attached café, Café Severino, which remains part of the shop today. The bookstore later gained wider national recognition after appearing as a filming location for the telenovela Laços de Família (2000-2001). Dalva Gasparian ran Argumento until her death in 2017, after which her children took over: Marcus in financial management, Eduardo running the café, and Laura handling book acquisitions.
Visit official site ↗Roma Norte, Mexico City
Polilla Libreria is a bookshop in Mexico City that sells books its owners personally like.
Best for Books picked by the owners
Historic & Traditional, Rome / Online
Rome antiquarian bookshop specializing in rare books, maps, and engravings, family-run by the D'Aniello family since 1991. Currently at Piazza Sallustio 14. Founded 1974, not 1931 as sometimes stated.
Best for Antiquarian books and prints.
Ex Libris is a Rome antiquarian bookshop specializing in rare and antique books, maps, and engravings, with particular emphasis on first editions. According to the shop's own 'Chi siamo' page and its listing with A.L.A.I. (the Italian antiquarian booksellers' association), the business was founded in 1974, not 1931. The D'Aniello family took over management in 1991; the shop was more recently run by Emidio and Leone D'Aniello, alongside Maria Pia Lanzoni until her death in 2022. It is a member of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers. The shop is currently located at Piazza Sallustio 14 in Rome's Ludovisi-Sallustiano district, open Tuesday through Saturday.
Visit official site ↗Via Del Babuino, Rome / Online
The Roman address for collector art books - Franco Maria Ricci's imprint on Via del Babuino, where the book is made to be an object.
Best for Collector art books.
Visit official site ↗Rome
Italy's largest bookstore chain, and the Via del Corso flagship is the biggest in Rome. Three floors of Italian and international books, music, and gifts.
Best for Three floors of Italian and international books, music, and gifts
Visit official site ↗Salzburg / Austria
Bookshop with fiction, nonfiction, children's books and calendars, plus an online catalogue.
Visit official site ↗San Francisco / USA
Books cast in hot metal, letterpress-printed, and hand-bound entirely in one San Francisco workshop since 1974.
Best for Books cast in hot metal, letterpress-printed
Arion Press makes books entirely by hand, describing itself as "the only printer in the United States to make books entirely by hand from comma to cover under one roof." Founded in 1974 as the successor to San Francisco's Grabhorn Press, it operates what it calls the last unified hot-metal type foundry, letterpress workshop, and book bindery still working together in America, based at 2 Marina Boulevard in the Fort Mason Landmark Building, open Tuesday through Saturday.
Arion Press states its foundry equipment once cast type for the United Nations Charter in 1945 — a claim repeated only in the press's own materials, with no independent archival or UN-history source found to corroborate it, so it is reported here as the press's own account rather than established fact. That same hot-metal casting, hand-typesetting, and hand-binding chain is still what produces each Arion edition today. The press pairs classic and contemporary literature with commissioned artists for small, hand-assembled runs — recent titles include Fables of Aesop with artwork by Kiki Smith, Octavia E. Butler's Kindred illustrated by Alison Saar, and A.A. Milne's Pooh illustrated by Sandow Birk.
Arion Press works alongside the affiliated Grabhorn Institute, which runs artist residencies and educational programs on the same premises, extending the craft beyond the press's own book production into teaching typecasting, printing, and binding to a new generation. Half a century after its founding, it remains a working type foundry and bindery, not a museum piece.
Visit official site ↗North Beach, San Francisco
Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti founded City Lights Booksellers & Publishers in 1953, and it remains both an independent bookstore and a publisher. Its North Beach rooms anchor Beat-era literary San Francisco.
Best for Independent books and Beat heritage
Visit official site ↗Richmond
Green Apple Books is an independent San Francisco bookstore founded in 1967 by Richard Savoy on Clement Street. It has since grown into three sister stores, still majority book-focused despite selling records and gifts.
Best for Independent books on Clement Street since 1967
Green Apple Books began in 1967, when 25-year-old Richard Savoy — an Army veteran with a radio-technician job at United Airlines but no bookselling experience — took out a credit union loan and leased a storefront in a pre-1906 building on Clement Street, in San Francisco's Richmond District. He stocked it with used books, comics, and National Geographic back issues, and the shop grew from there: doubling in width over the years, adding a mezzanine and a second floor, and in 1996 acquiring its neighbor of twenty years, Revolver Records, which added new and used music until that annex closed in 2021.
Savoy sold the business gradually starting in 1999 to three longtime employees — Kevin Hunsanger, Kevin Ryan, and Pete Mulvihill — a buyout structured to run over a decade so he could mentor the new owners while spreading the cost of the inventory. Hunsanger sold his shares in 2018; Ryan and Mulvihill still run the store. Despite the vinyl, magazines, and gift items on the shelves, more than 85% of Green Apple's sales are still books.
The original Clement Street shop has since been joined by two sister stores under the same ownership: Books on the Park on 9th Avenue, and Browser Books on Fillmore Street — all three hosting regular author events and school and community fundraisers.
Visit official site ↗3885A Cesar Chavez Street, San Francisco, CA 94131, United States / San Francisco / United States
Celia Sack opened the Noe Valley cookbook shop in 2008, a regular stop on Bay Area chef book tours.
Best for Cookbooks and Bay Area chef events at a Noe Valley shop opened in 2008.
Visit official site ↗1743 Buchanan Street, San Francisco, CA 94115, United States / San Francisco / United States
Nobuo Mihara co-founded Paper Tree in 1968; the Japantown origami shop continues.
Best for Origami from a Japantown shop founded in 1968.
Visit official site ↗San Francisco
The Aesthetic Union is a letterpress printing studio in San Francisco operating for over a decade, offering custom letterpress printing, retail paper goods and art prints, workshops starting from $100, and press rental facilities. The shop stocks greeting cards and stationery featuring collaborative designs with artists Wyatt Hersey and Cane Howlet.
Best for Letterpress printing and workshops
Visit official site ↗The Booksmith
Hidden GemHaight Street, San Francisco
The Booksmith is a general-interest bookshop on Haight Street in San Francisco, serving neighbourhood readers as well as visitors. The store moved to 1727 Haight Street in 2021, continuing a bookselling history that began elsewhere on the street in 1976. Its author programme and broad selection give readers reasons to return beyond buying a particular new release.
Best for General-interest books and author events on Haight Street
The Booksmith combines bookselling with an active San Francisco events programme. Its catalogue includes printed books and audiobooks. Merchandise and services occupy separate parts of the business. Readings and author conversations give the calendar its own editorial role rather than treating events as incidental promotions. Staff recommendations add another layer of selection, and the shop accepts orders by email when a requested title is not already part of the immediate browse. Its distribution policy is unusually explicit. The Booksmith currently excludes consignment titles. It considers books available through standard returnable channels such as Ingram. Authors and publicists use a separate proposal route for events, keeping programming distinct from ordinary customer orders. These systems show how the merchant works behind the shelves. Catalogue, recommendation and public conversation are related but separately managed activities. The Booksmith's identity therefore comes from the combination of a general bookshop, a documented ordering practice and a literary programme that regularly brings writers into direct conversation with San Francisco readers.
Visit official site ↗804 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA 94133, United States / San Francisco / United States
Founded 1974 by architect Bill Stout; one of San Francisco's essential design bookstores. AIA California: launched 1974 with Steven Holl; ~70,000-volume catalogue; Eames Institute acquired shop and publishers after Stout's 2022 retirement.
Best for Architecture and design books from a San Francisco shop founded in 1974.
Visit official site ↗Donostia / San Sebastián
Kaxilda is an associative bookshop and cultural meeting space in the Amara-Easo district of Donostia/San Sebastián, organized around what its own materials describe as a mission to 'bite words, nourish thought' (morder las palabras, alimentar el pensamiento).
Best for Critical-culture books from small publishers, plus a meeting space
Kaxilda is an associative bookshop and cultural meeting space in the Amara-Easo district of Donostia/San Sebastián, organized around what its own materials describe as a mission to 'bite words, nourish thought' (morder las palabras, alimentar el pensamiento). Rather than a conventional retail bookstore, it operates as a community-run library and gathering space, curating a catalogue weighted toward small and independent publishers working in critical theory, feminist writing, anarchist history, and political critique, alongside titles on surveillance, class analysis, and indigenous resistance movements. The shop maintains its own in-house publishing imprint, Editorial Kaxilda, extending its role from bookseller to publisher of the same critical-culture material it stocks. Attached to the bookshop is Kantina, a restaurant and social space created and run in partnership with two local collectives, Fede Pacha & Co and Biba Ardoak, which the project describes as 'a space to nourish bodies, lives, and struggles' — folding food and hospitality into the same political-education mission as the books themselves. This combination of independent publishing, curated bookselling, and a collectively run social space distinguishes Kaxilda from a standard neighborhood bookshop: it functions as a hub for the city's small-press and activist reading culture as much as a place to buy books.
Visit official site ↗Alameda 115, Santiago Centro, Santiago
Somos una librería comprometida con la lectura, que busca abrir las puertas a la lectura y el pensamiento crítico a niñez y adultos
Best for Books
Visit official site ↗Providencia, Santiago
Santiago bookshop specialising in illustrated books, including art, architecture, design, photography and illustration, with exclusive Chilean distribution for Taschen, Gustavo Gili and Blüme.
Best for Books
Visit official site ↗Lastarria, Santiago
Chilean shop bringing together creators in music, film, books and design since 2011, with vinyl, posters, homeware, games, apparel and broad book sections.
Best for Design
Visit official site ↗Lastarria, Santiago
Independent Lastarria bookshop opened in 2010, with a broad catalogue in social sciences, literature and the humanities, as well as book launches and cultural activities.
Best for Books
Visit official site ↗Providencia, Santiago
Traditional independent bookshop in Providencia with more than 20,000 titles and a second floor devoted to books for children and young readers.
Best for Books
Visit official site ↗Chuo-ku
Mariya has supplied handicraft materials in Sapporo since 1926, close to the Sapporo Clock Tower. Its range extends from embroidery supplies to weaving equipment, with craft books and classes also part of the business. The shop carries imported brands as well as Japanese products, so origin varies by item.
Best for Materials for embroidery, hand weaving and spinning
Mariya is a handicraft-supply shop near Sapporo's Clock Tower, founded in 1926. It remains organised around the materials people need to make things themselves. The company lists craft books and classes as part of its work, alongside a gallery programme. On the selling floors, embroidery supplies share space with equipment for hand weaving and spinning. The published range includes Japanese makers as well as imported names such as DMC and Ashford, so the shop is useful for comparing tools rather than assuming everything on its shelves was made locally. The dyeing materials extend the selection beyond sewing and knitting, and the shop also lists parts for making accessories. Shoppers planning a particular project can use the extensive category lists to decide what to ask about before travelling. The distinction between shop and gallery matters here: an exhibition can introduce finished textile work, while the retail stock is largely the thread and equipment, supported by reference material used to make new pieces.
Visit official site ↗