The Bookshop Podcast
The Bookshop Podcast
Exploring the American Book Center: Martijn Mertz on Bookstore Leadership and Amsterdam's Literary Scene
In this episode, I'm in conversation with Martijn Meerts, the co-director of the American Book Center in Amsterdam. Martijn's anthropology background subtly colors his approach to this role, and he shares how it adds a unique perspective to his daily work. We also uncover the enchanting history of the American Book Center, originally founded by Lynn Kaplanian-Buller and her husband, and how it has joyfully remained in the family for generations.
Martijn shares his love of The Hague and Amsterdam, capturing the essence of these cities' book culture and vibrant atmosphere. From the serenity of the canals to the artistic treasures of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam offers a backdrop to our discussions on literature's role in these communities. Martijn shares insights into the growing fascination with cozy crime novels and beloved Dutch children's stories, including the iconic Miffy series. Our episode serves as a tribute to the creative energy that buzzes through these cities and a celebration of the American Book Center's role at the heart of it all.
ABC Bookstores
Bookshop.org
The Miffy Children’s Books, Dick Bruna and Patricia Crampton
yourbookstore.io
The Miffy Children’s Books, Dick Bruna and Patricia Crampton
Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson-Beverly and I'm a bibliophile. Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast. Each week, I present interviews with authors, independent bookshop owners and booksellers from around the globe and publishing professionals. To help the show reach more people, please share episodes with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. When I started this podcast in 2020, my intention was to support indie bookshops and authors and to produce a quality podcast where listeners gain insight to authors' lives and their writing style and chat with booksellers about what they're reading. I chose a format that is enjoyable for me, my guests and my listeners a show without interruptions from advertisers cutting into conversations With the millions of podcasts out there. Thank you for choosing to listen to the Bookshop Podcast. If you'd like to financially support the show, please go to thebookshoppodcastcom. Click on support the show and you can donate through Buy Me A Coffee.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to announce that the Bookshop Podcast has partnered with Books in Homes USA and Heloise Press in the UK. Books in Homes USA is a non-profit 501c3 that provides free books of choice to children across the country and works to support childhood literacy and promote a lifelong love and enjoyment of reading. For more information about literacy rates in the United States, please go to thebookshoppodcastcom. Click on the video of me speaking about this topic and how you can donate to Books in Homes USA. For up-to-date information about our partners, the Lunch with an Author series in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, sign up for my newsletter through thebookshoppodcastcom.
Speaker 1:And one more thing if you're an American citizen and haven't sent in a mail ballot, please make sure to vote in person on Tuesday, november 5th. Democracy, women's rights, the climate crisis, creative freedom, book banning and social justice are at stake. Your vote makes a difference. Okay, let's get on with this week's interview. You're listening to episode 272. The American Book Century is a family-owned bookstore that originated in Amsterdam and opened its doors in 1972. Since then, the bookstore has opened stores in the Hague and Amstelveen. The owner and founders of the business are Lynn Ka. In the Hague and Amstelveen, the owner and founders of the business are Lynn, kaplanian Buller and her husband, who have passed the business down each generation of their family. Director and manager of the American Book Center, martijn Mertz describes Lynn as being the heart and soul of the American Book Center. Hi, martijn, and welcome to the show. It's great to have you here.
Speaker 2:Thank you, nice to be here.
Speaker 1:Well, let's begin by learning about you. What led you to become the director and manager of the American Book Center in Amsterdam?
Speaker 2:Well, good fortune, I suppose.
Speaker 1:That's a wonderful answer.
Speaker 2:I just started there as a student, basically working part-time, 25 years ago. I was still in college in Amsterdam although I live in the Hague, but the university is in Amsterdam and I studied there anthropology, was tired of my old job and then my girlfriend at the time suggested to me well, maybe you should ask over there, since I was buying my books there anyway. And that's what I did, got hired and then it went step by step. Basically, you just you know, yeah, you start to work and you just work hard and take more responsibility when it's still given. And are you still?
Speaker 1:enjoying your job.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's the best spot on earth, yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't think I've ever heard a bookseller or a bookshop owner or manager say they hate the job. It's so wonderful to hear, but tell me, do you ever use your anthropology degree?
Speaker 2:Well, maybe subconsciously, I don't know, I might. Yeah, I'm not sure you learn to look at stuff differently, I suppose.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, that right there is worth its weight in gold, I think Now the American Book Center was founded by Lynn Kaplanian-Buller and her husband. Is the bookstore still family owned, and were they the original owners?
Speaker 2:Lynn was not the original owner. She started working there when it started but she took over early 80s. Then she bought the ABC with her husband, ava Kaplanian. But she's been there from the beginning and they still own it. They do. Yeah, her son and daughter are still in the company, although Paul the son is not working with us, but he still has a share in the company basically. So he's involved still. But yeah, lynn is, she's semi-retired but she can't help herself. She just has to, you know, work with the books and very creative, still going strong. So, yeah, we see a lot of her still.
Speaker 1:I can imagine that giving up a bookshop like that would be extremely hard. I don't think you could just stop and go cold turkey. I think you would have to kind of gradually fade out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is the buzz of it, and also it's well, it's her child, more or less. So yeah, you don't hand those out easily.
Speaker 1:That's for sure. Okay, now the original store in Amsterdam has relocated right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, twice, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, which one had the tree designed around the staircase that's the current uh store yeah, that's such a fabulous and intricate design.
Speaker 2:I love it yeah, what's a great uh uh thought of, uh, an architect we hired at the time. Uh, he helped us out and he had this idea of, you know, a tree through all three floors, basically, uh, because that's where the books come from.
Speaker 1:The tree is symbolic for the paper yeah, in the photos I really like the way the staircase winds around the tree and then you have the bookcases on the side like a book wall basically, yeah, uh, I mean we can only reach up to, you know, let's say, two meters and the rest is basically wallpaper.
Speaker 2:But it looks amazing, plus its design, in such a way you you sort of twist upward. First time I was there at about 10 years ago, I think it's hard to find your way back down, it's you get stuck in the loop on the second floor. So that's, that's a really great design.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds like it, but you also have stores in the Hague and Leitschendam.
Speaker 2:Leitschendam yeah, that's pretty new. It's actually in the Westfield mall and I don't know if you have them in California. Yes, we do and they started this huge mall which is very undutch in a way, and that's about this huge mall which is very undutch in a way, and that's about six, seven kilometers from here. Actually, we saw an opportunity we have a very cute little bookstore in there.
Speaker 1:It's very expensive, but also there's a lot of people coming there. And what is it that makes each store unique?
Speaker 2:Well, the locations I take it Amsterdam. The store itself is very pretty, that's one of the main attractions and of course it has a lot more books than the other two stores. It's like a mothership basically that's Amsterdam. But the city of Amsterdam is of course, flooded with tourists and this has an impact on the sales. The books you sell basically In the Hague, which is sort of the government city, where the government is. It's also an international city with lots of international companies and businesses, and so it's more of a civil workers town diplomats, expats, so that the public is different, not so many tourists, so you get a different mix of books again. And Leidschendam is the mall of the Netherlands. It's very touristy. Obviously. You just have the highlights there.
Speaker 1:And if you're driving, how long would it take to get from Amsterdam to the Hague?
Speaker 2:About an hour.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, after hearing you explain about the differences between the areas that the shops are in, I'm sure there's a difference in the curation of the stores too. So if you could talk about that a little bit. And also I was wondering if your booksellers have a say in the way the stores are curated.
Speaker 2:Well, amsterdam has probably about twice as many books. So we have the same categories sections as the Hague, but there's just more more choice, wider array and also because of the Hague, because of the sort of customers it attracts, we tend to be a bit more heavy on the nonfiction books, like politics and history. Amsterdam has loads of big coffee table books, art books, but not so much in the Hague. So each store is just a little bit different because of the public, but in general you see the same stuff, just a little bit less of it. We invest heavily on the staff because they are the curators, they buy. We don't have centralized buying.
Speaker 2:If you come in, we train you in a few months to curate a section, preferably one you're comfortable with, not necessarily so. So I, for example, I buy humor books, business books, manga books, music books very eclectic mix. So you talk with the sales reps, you talk with the customers. We of course, have our own tools on the web, in our own interweb, to help us decide what to put on the shelves. But basically everyone has their own little shop in shop, so to speak, and that's what makes us different from most bookstores Also has a huge impact on what we put on the shelves.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a fabulous idea in so many ways. For example, as a customer, when you come in and you're looking for something in particular in a certain genre or nonfiction area, you can be guided to that particular person who knows that inventory super well and can guide you to the best book for you. But also it makes the booksellers feel wanted and needed and that they have an important task to curate that particular part of the store. I think it's a fabulous idea. And on another note too, booksellers are best when they're selling the books they have read and love, and it's also fun to kind of edge people away from some of the bestsellers.
Speaker 2:I mean you'd need to have you know the bestsellers, but next to that you can put interesting stuff there and try to convince your customers that it's worth buying.
Speaker 1:Some of the best books I've read and the ones that I've enjoyed the most, I've bought from a bookseller who's taken the time to talk with me and find out what kind of books I like to read. Now, are all your books in the bookstores in English, or do you have sections, for example, maybe in the children's section, in other languages?
Speaker 2:No, no, it's all English language.
Speaker 1:So I'm guessing that, apart from the tourists, you must have quite a large English speaking community there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, you're right. Dutch people, like what I've heard understand, like Scandinavians, just are really good with English language. They don't buy and plus, you know, the amount of books you can read in English is lots more than what's been translated into Dutch. I guess it's also because of the Internet and the music. I mean, everything comes from the States.
Speaker 1:And that brings me to another question.
Speaker 2:Are children in the Netherlands taught English pretty much from the time they start school. Well, in my days that started at high school so around, which is here around 11, 12 years old. I think they start a bit earlier now. Plus, we have bilingual, more and more bilingual schools popping up all over the country.
Speaker 1:Well, that's fantastic. Now, what else do you sell apart from books in the stores? No, not much.
Speaker 2:I mean, we have some merchandise, but it has to be related to books. We're not a toy store. We have magazines, we have calendars, we have some games. That's more or less it. We just focus on the books really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, your magazine section looks huge, it looks fantastic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, although I mean it's not doing as well as it used to. It's slowly sort of dying out a bit, unfortunately, but I mean there's other stuff in its stead, and you were just asking about the English language. But also after COVID, what we saw was a lot more young people coming into the store. Actually it changed. We used way more older people and not so much younger, and now it totally shifted. The YA section is where they start to read. Basically that's grown since Harry Potter into a huge section, which is wonderful. But I mean the demographics is. It gives me a lot of hope for the future because so many teenagers that start to read and hopefully they'll keep coming and, you know, at a certain point probably move over to other sections.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that warms my heart because many booksellers have told me exactly the same thing that since COVID, a lot more younger people are buying books and reading them, which is fantastic, and coming back for another book and another when people say to me oh, you know, young people aren't reading, they're on their phones all the time. I don't see that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't either, and I think they are reading and buying the books, which is important. They're not being bought for them. When parents ask me well, you know my kids don't want to read, what can I do? I think it's often because they haven't found the right book to read for them. Just let them read whatever they want to read. Let them choose the books they want to read. Or, if they have no interest in going into a bookstore, think about what they're really interested in, what they're passionate about, and find a book that maybe has something to do with that. If it's surfing, find a nonfiction book about surfing, or a fictional book about someone who's taken up surfing, or memoir. You're bound to get them in some way and just leave it around the house. I guarantee they will pick it up. But I believe you have to let them read what they want to read, to get them excited about reading, and then they will eventually move on to other topics. But if you cut off that love of reading, I think that's detrimental.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about beautiful Amsterdam. The only time I've been there was I was very lucky I was doing the wardrobe for the David Bowie tour the Glass Piter tour in 1987.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, I remember that yeah.
Speaker 1:Good. Well, we started off in Rotterdam doing rehearsals and then a skeleton crew went off and we did a commercial with David Bowie and Tina Turner for Pepsi, I think it was and then we came back to Amsterdam for a concert and I was so taken with the city. I think it's beautiful. It just has so much history and beauty. I adore the architecture, the people. It was wonderful. So, with this in mind, if someone was in Amsterdam for a few days, are there historical sites, museums, hikes, that you suggest they visit?
Speaker 2:There's so many. I mean, I'm not from Amsterdam, but I enjoy going there. It's an open air museum, basically.
Speaker 1:I think they need to use that quote in their travel brochures. That's fantastic.
Speaker 2:Right, I prefer to walk along the canals, basically, and just let my eyes do the rest, because it's very pretty. It's also very busy, so time it well.
Speaker 1:And what about the?
Speaker 2:Hague. Well, the Hague is smaller and a bit more quiet, but it's a beautiful city also. Plus, we have a beach, which is great. That's one of our biggest pluses. But Amsterdam, yeah, of course you have to visit the Rijksmuseum. I mean it's busy, but it has the most amazing masterpieces. But there's so much. What do you do in a few days? Take a boat trip, but walk the canals, I would say.
Speaker 1:There are a couple of things I love to do when I go to a new city, a new town. I love to walk around extremely early in the morning when everything's just kind of quiet and then you get the city coming alive with workers. And I love going to markets, farmers markets, supermarkets, because I love to see what people are growing and eating. It's a good way to learn what things are called in another language. I just love that. And of course, I love bookshops.
Speaker 2:The bookstores yeah.
Speaker 1:Martin, what are you currently reading?
Speaker 2:I just finished. Very latest Richard Osman. Do you know the he's so popular? The Tuesday Murder Club series.
Speaker 1:I know of Richard Osman, but I have not read that series.
Speaker 2:They're filming it now, which is a little sort of crime light but very British, very funny. But he just started a new series which is called we Solve Murders. It just came out last week. We were all waiting for it. I think most of the staff has read it by now. It's you know the cozy crime uh is is doing well also on the tv with the only murders in the building. You know that very light, light crime I love it, it's fun yeah, but it's great to read.
Speaker 2:And now I'm going on in a series that I've, you know, go back to once in a while, which is also british. Well, actually, scottish crime JD Kirk, dci, logan, that's now. I just keep reading away.
Speaker 1:Do you read many books by Dutch authors?
Speaker 2:You know, I haven't read a single Dutch book in probably 30 years.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:Except for kids books, of course, which we are really good at. But grown-up literature in Holland I'm not too familiar with and it does not attract me really. But our kids' books are amazing. I've read a lot of them myself and also to my kids. The best known worldwide is Nijntje, you know the little bunny Miffy Miffy in English.
Speaker 1:They're so cute and for people listening, who might want to look at those books. They are by Dick Bruner and Patricia Crampton.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:What about illustrators? Do you have many of them in Amsterdam and the Hague? I would think you would, just because it's so beautiful and inspiring there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, especially Amsterdam is a very creative hub for all kinds of artists and makers, but also very visual, and that's also yeah, we get a lot of requests, people wanting to do stuff in our store.
Speaker 1:Do you have a lot of events in the stores?
Speaker 2:We try to yeah, If the building suits it. You know, if it's too big, we try and rent another place for it. And what we also try and do is sell books on locations, on events, Like we have a huge Dutch Comic Con, for example, where all the Marvel, the manga, fantasy cons.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're popular over here too, and everybody dresses up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we just have an enormous stall there stand and sell books there a couple of times a year and that's good for business. But it's nice to go.
Speaker 1:And I'm sure it's reciprocated because it's great for the community.
Speaker 2:Plus, we let them know that we have a lot of that stuff in the stores. We have a lot of nerd culture within ABC. Basically, I mean that in the nicest way possible, but yeah.
Speaker 1:That's funny. Martijn, it's been great chatting with you and when I get back to Amsterdam, which I hope will happen in the next couple of years I will come and visit. I would love to see the bookshops.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, when you were in Amsterdam at the time did you visit?
Speaker 1:Oh, sadly not the bookstores, because you know, when you were in amsterdam, at the time did you visit? Oh, sadly not the bookstores, because you know, when you're on tour with someone you really don't get that much time off. You know, I went and did some things, but it was like one afternoon and we just kind of raced around, sadly well, if you're coming, let me know, I'll give you a tour well, I would love that.
Speaker 1:thank you, maybe I need to do a like a bookshop podcast tour and take a group of people and we'll go and visit bookshops in different countries who have been on the show. That would be fun. Martijn, I wish you all the best and thank you so much for taking time out and being on the show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you too, with the podcast and all else. Bye, bye.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to my conversation with Martijn Mertz. He is the co-director of the American Book Center in Amsterdam and the Hague. To help the show reach more people, please share episodes with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. To find out more about the Bookshop Podcast, go to thebookshoppodcastcom and make sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to the show. You can also follow me at Mandy Jackson Beverly on X, Instagram and Facebook and on YouTube at the Bookshop Podcast. If you have a favorite indie bookshop that you'd like to suggest we have on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you via the contact form at thebookshoppodcastcom. The Bookshop Podcast is written and produced by me, Mandy Jackson-Beverly, Theme music provided by Brian Beverly, executive assistant to Mandy, Adrian Otterhahn and graphic design by Frances Barala. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.