page_title: St. Mark's Bookshop
section_title: Competitive pressure
hierarchical_section_title: St. Mark's Bookshop / Competitive pressure
caption_attribution_description: English: St Marks Bookstore, showing the clearance sale in New York City
context_page_description: St. Mark's Bookshop was an independent book store, established in 1977 in New York City's East Village neighborhood. It was the oldest independent bookstore in Manhattan owned by its original owners. The shop, run by proprietors Bob Contant and Terry McCoy, specialized in cultural and critical theory, graphic design, poetry, small presses, and film studies—what the New York Times called "neighborhood-appropriate literature".
  It featured periodicals and journals, including foreign titles, and included sections on anarchists, art criticism, women's studies, music, drama, and drugs.
  The store, named after St. Mark's Place, its original location, closed on February 28, 2016 due to rising rent and mismanagement.
context_section_description: Independent bookstores have a long history in New York. Other examples include The Strand, Westsider, McNally Jackson, Shakespeare & Co,   WORD, Longitude, Bluestockings, and Housing Works and in Brooklyn, powerHouse, BookCourt, and Greenlight Bookstore.
  These stores and small chains have been feeling competitive pressure from the larger chains, internet-based booksellers, and digital media.
  In an attempt to be competitive with electronic media, St. Mark's and OR Books engaged in a joint venture where OR Books sold their electronic media via the St. Mark's website.
  Even some of the larger chains, such as Borders, have been unable to remain solvent in the face of competitive pressures from web-based stores and e-books.
caption: St Marks Bookshop during its clearance sale
exif: {}