Librería Barco de Papel is located in Elmhurst, New York, which has a large Hispanic population. Obviously, the majority of the customers at the bookstore are Hispanic; however, with the city’s changing demographics, the co-owners have seen a change in the kind of customers that visit the bookstore.
Image from Centroculturalbarcodepapel.org
Aside from the local native Spanish speakers, the co-owners have started noticing that a lot of the newer customers travel to the bookstore from different boroughs. There have also been many new non-native Spanish speakers that visit the book store. They seek books to improve their Spanish speaking. The bookstore also carries unique books in English that attract all types of individuals who love reading.
The reasons why this bookstore is still very successful is because they are constantly thinking about how to improve their community, rather than how to make profit from the bookstore.
One of the co-owners said, “A bookstore is more about how you connect to the community and what kind of services you are offering to them. What is important is that we are more than a store, we are a cultural place. We use the profit that we get from the books to fund the activities and programs that we run.”
