Writer’s Block bookstore aims to attract downtown crowd

With books, we read and escape into our alternate lives where we might fight off dragons, burn down beautiful buildings, befriend a little prince or play the lead role in an epic love story.

Now, it’s time to crawl into the secret garden that is The Writer’s Block, one of the newest additions to downtown Las Vegas.

The bookstore, at 1020 Fremont St. between 10th and 11th streets, opened its doors to the public Nov. 30 for a soft opening. A grand opening is planned for early February.

The Writer’s Block sells new books, stationery imported from all over the world, board games, quirky trinkets and other types of toys that give the store its distinctive personality.

Owners Scott Seeley and Drew Cohen hail from New York, where Seeley was one of the founders of an organization called 826NYC that supported free writing programs for students in Brooklyn. The program was set inside a superhero store, where the students used a secret door behind a bookcase to enter.

About two years ago, they were introduced to the Downtown Project’s Tony Hsieh, who wanted to bring a similar literary culture that 826NYC had to the local downtown scene.

The store’s plain white structure radiates an aura of simplicity as nothing more than an ordinary building to fulfill one’s need to read simple words on simple pages bound together by a simple piece of thread. But any book lover knows it’s much more than that, because as soon as you enter that ordinary building you’ve uncovered probably the biggest discovery yet. And that’s exactly the kind of experience Seeley and Cohen want customers to have.

“There’s so much clutter of objects and so many interesting things that it’ll take you a few different visits to actually uncover everything that’s on display,” Cohen said.

There are books to the left and right, ranging from new to classic, fiction and nonfiction, and to art and design. From the colorful and geometric kites, the birds perched around the store and noun T-shirts hung upon the walls that declare the wearer a dreamer, a realist, a cyborg or extraterrestrial, visitors will see that even the random clutter has some intricacies to it.

Take a stroll near the fiction section and you’ll come across an egg shaker or a sweet pack of red herrings to snack on, just don’t let it distract you from what’s really important, like responsibilities or world peace.

And if you travel farther into the store, you’ll find yourself in the children’s and young adult section where the little ones can get lost in a new bedtime story or where the older kids can rediscover the books that made them into the people they are today.

Don’t forget to say hello and even request to pet the bookstore bunny, The Baron. Aside from his daily dose of greens, he’s getting his paper protein from Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle.” A tip from the owners: The Baron loves his ears rubbed.

And if you like The Baron, The Writer’s Block will give you a chance to have your very own bookstore-inspired pet through its artificial bird adoption. For about $5, potential pet owners will go home with an artificial bird, a name tag and biography.

Seeley and Cohen, who run the store with a true partnership as a married couple and business partners, each tackle different aspects of the shop. Cohen generally tends to stocking the book inventory, while Seeley handles the layout, design and building of the store.

Seeley joked that it will be perpetually under construction, as they plan to continuously change the look of the shop. “We’ll always be adding new things, new shelves, new products, new interactive kind of things.”

But it’s more than just a bookshop. Past the noun shirts, the children’s books, The Baron and behind the back of the store’s forest facade is a backroom brightened by white lights, with rows of wooden tables and chairs. The room awaits the commotion of the free writing workshops, book signings, club meetings and school field trips the store intends to host.

Participants will write stories and hand-make a book to take home, Seeley said of the proposed weekly workshops that end with their letterpress machine that will bind the books together.

“We really want to be a place where books are sold, but also where books are made,” Cohen said.

As the rare independently owned bookstore, there’s concern for its success among the rise of e-books and the struggling paper industry.

“I think a lot of it has to do with scale,” Seeley said, “It costs us a lot less to run a small space like this than a Barnes and Noble that’s got like 50 staff members. And we can have more intimate experiences and we can create a more intimate experience.”

Cohen said he feels that the bigger-name retailers, such as Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com, are more in competition with each other than they are necessarily with smaller, independent stores.

He points out that their inventory is key, and it is considerably different from the big-box stores.

“I think it’s about curation, it’s carrying titles that we can vouch for,” Cohen said.

The belief in the coexistence between paper and electronic books helps keep them running the store.

“It’s fun in the digital age to be celebrating the physicality of books and the materials of books,” Seeley said.

The Writer’s Block is open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sundays.

Contact reporter Cassandra Taloma at ctaloma@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Find her on Twitter: @CassandraTaloma.