In Your Face, Borders

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While major book chains have floundered in the recession, little indie bookstores are flourishing in New York. Crain's crunches the numbers and comes up with over half a dozen thriving new shops, including Fort Greene's Greenlight Bookstore, the Upper West Side's Book Culture, and Posman's in the Chelsea Market. They're surviving partly by being more nimble than the big guys and partly by borrowing tricks from their repertoire like selling greeting cards, chess sets, and other vaguely literary non-book items. And although they're not necessarily pulling in fistfuls of cash, they're at least breaking even, which is pretty impressive in the age of the Kindle. [Crain's]