It’s been less than six weeks since The Best Bookstore in Union Square opened its doors at 226 Powell St., and owners Sarah Lacy and Paul Carr are already imagining ways to disrupt their industry.
“It’s maddening to me how little innovation there is in bookselling,” Carr said after closing up the shop one evening last month. “I’m fascinated by looking at a bookstore as a startup.”
Sitting next to Carr was Lacy, his longtime business and life partner. They were in the well-lit basement beneath the shop that they plan to transform into an events space, and Carr rattled off a few areas of the business he thinks are ripe for innovation.
Book recommendations and in-store pick-up could use some upgrades, Carr thinks, as well as atmospheric choices like background music. “I have this obsession with this idea of a bookstore radio station that plays really good music, but then every so often has little snippets of authors talking about the books,” Carr mused.
An author and former tech journalist, Carr also mentioned how they’ve used interior design to optimize for a particular customer experience: One of Best Bookstore’s investors, a former architect, recommended only having waist-height tables — no bookshelves, except along the walls — to encourage customers to interact. (It also has the added benefit of providing the shopkeepers with a clear line of sight through the whole store, Carr noted.)
Those few ideas barely scratch the surface of what Carr and Lacy have in store for San Francisco’s bookselling scene: They launched a Substack newsletter; they’re planning a Best Bookstore podcast; they want to host bustling community events. Starting with the SF shop and the original Best Bookstore in Palm Springs, they say they want to grow into the second-largest, non-discount indie bookstore chain in the country.
“I could do this all day. The thing is with startups, you are basically thinking constantly about how you could innovate, delight, and surprise people,” Carr said, glancing at his partner beside him. “Sorry. I’m talking too fast and too much.”
In a city rife with beloved indie bookstores, that endless brainstorm is one thing that sets Best Bookstore apart.
“We’re a very social, high-energy bookstore,” Lacy said. “Someone described us as ‘What BookTok feels like in real life.’”
It’s no surprise the pair are thinking more like startup founders than traditional booksellers: They covered the tech industry as journalists for more than twenty years, and Lacy and Carr’s business senses are steeped in the ways of Silicon Valley. Even as they reported on the Valley’s dark sides (as founder of the VC-funded tech news site PandoDaily, Lacy was personally targeted by executives at Uber for her tough coverage of the company), they internalized its entrepreneurial spirit and go-for-broke ethos.
So far, it seems that energy is working for them. Carr said the store is “never empty,” and Lacy said the store has been “profitable, like cash-flow-positive,” since day one.
“But,” she noted, “we opened during the holidays.”
“The trouble with opening something in the middle of the busiest season is you have no idea what’s normal,” Carr said. “Every month we’re going to learn more. What’s February like in San Francisco? What’s March like? We’ll need to watch things for a few cycles because every year could be a one-off.”
Luckily, Lacy and Carr were able to secure a two-year subsidized lease through the city-partnered Vacant to Vibrant program, the longest lease term the nonprofit offers, so they will be able to see how book sales wax and wane throughout a given year in San Francisco.
“Obviously, our intention is to renew forever, to the end of time,” Carr said. “But two years is more than enough time to know if we can do enough business that [paying] market rate feels right. If we can’t, we shouldn't be doing it here.”
If they can’t make it work by late 2027, Carr said, they would move somewhere else in the city where a market rate rental was more tenable.
In 2022, Lacy and Carr opened the original Best Bookstore in Palm Springs, where they have a second home, and where they quickly learned how much seasonal tourism can impact revenue. While SF is not quite the resort town Palm Springs is, millions of tourists visit the city every year, and Union Square, with its cable car lines, flagship stores, and hotels, is a particularly popular spot for out-of-towners.
Still, Lacy and Carr both said they’ve been pleasantly surprised with how many locals have come to check out the store so far.
“I thought of Union Square like, as the mayor says, San Francisco’s ‘front door’ in terms of tourism… but I really had not thought about Union Square as much of a nexus as it is for the city,” Lacy said. “We’ve seen so many teenagers. We’ve met so many people who work at the Apple Store, who work at the Marriott, who work in hospitality. All the little old ladies who’ve lived in Nob Hill since the ‘60s come and tell us their stories.”
Lacy said District 3 Supervisor Danny Sauter is a regular in the store. Mayor Daniel Lurie, whom Lacy called “delightful,” also visited Best Bookstore last month for a Vacant to Vibrant photo-op.
“He found Sarah intimidating,” Carr laughed.
“No, he said, ‘I find this overwhelming. I find you overwhelming,’” Lacy corrected. “And I said, ‘I get that a lot.’”
According to Lacy, Lurie bought a book by historical nonfiction writer Erik Larson, whose titles sell particularly well with San Francisco customers.
“San Francisco loves classics and history,” Carr said.
“Which is fascinating for a place that’s all about reinvention of the future,” Lacy chimed in, seemingly still thinking like an editor framing a story for a reporter.
Lacy said she wants to use the basement space below Best Bookstore to host readings and book events for business authors, a genre venues see as generally less sexy than, say, fiction, and less likely to pack a house. But, true to form, that’s only one of a million ideas Lacy and Carr have for the space, which, when I visited before the holidays, was still in a slight state of disarray.
“We need to do a deep clean. We have one more mural to hang. We need to get a sound system,” Lacy said. “But we could have it ready very, very quickly.”
Editor's note: This article has been updated from an earlier version of this article that stated Lacy and Carr were married. They are domestic partners.
