Feminist Bookstore News was founded by Carol Seajay after the First National Women in Print Conference, intended to help the community that had attended stay in touch with each other.[7] The five largest feminist bookstores donated $100 each ($535 in 2023) to help start the publication.[8] The first issue was published on October 14, 1976.[7]
The publication began as a six-page mimeographed newsletter[9] called Feminist Bookstores Newsletter,[10] supported by funding from Womanbooks, Amazon Bookstore Cooperative, and New Words Bookstore.[11] The name was changed to Feminist Bookstore News in 1984. By 1988 the publication was 48 pages long and issues were professionally printed roughly every two months.[12]
As feminist bookstores became less common due to chain stores and online shopping, the subscriber count of FBN dropped, and publication eventually ceased in 2000.[11]
Activity
Book lists were common in FBN, with a focus on connecting readers with resources and supporting authors. Early list topics included “Native American Women,” “Black Women,” and “Young Women & Youth Liberation.”[13]
After Toni Morrison's book The Bluest Eye went out of print in the mid-1970s, FBN promoted a campaign to demonstrate demand to publishers by writing them orders for large quantities of the book. The Bluest Eye was reissued in 1978.[10] A similar effort took place with The Female Man by Joanna Russ, which went out of print in 1977 and was also re-released in 1978 after advocacy from feminist booksellers coordinated by FBN. This type of letter-writing campaign was often repeated in the publication.[14]
FBN popularized the practice of sending a portion of profit to feminist authors when selling copies of their remaindered books, because authors did not receive royalties from publishers for these copies.[15]
