Indie Spotlight: Downbound Books
Downbound Books was open to the public for less than half a year before the pandemic forced their doors closed. Since then, they’ve been operating mainly online. But at the helm is a lifelong lover of books, and with a curated collection of indie titles and bestsellers, Greg Kornbluh and the team at Downbound exemplify how bookselling is more than a simple transaction between bookseller and customer: it’s an open door to conversation and community.
Get to know Downbound Books and their story below!
About Greg Kornbluh
I grew up in Mt. Auburn, a Cincinnati neighborhood just a few miles away from Downbound’s Northside location. Books were big in our house – my mom is a voracious reader – and our go-to shop was Drew’s, which was located in a house just about a half-block outside of Hyde Park Square. It was the dreamiest.
I went to Cincinnati Public Schools and then did a little tri-state tour of colleges before graduating from Xavier. In 2005 I moved to Cape Cod for a year, and then went to Boston for a graduate program in American Studies. While finishing school I worked as a bookseller at a great indie called Newtonville Books, and then I got a job at Harvard University Press, where I worked in pretty much every nook of sales & marketing over the course of a decade. I came back to Cincinnati in late 2018, and opened Downbound about a year later.
Creating Downbound
Bookstores have always been my favorites places. For any reader, I think the feeling of being absolutely ensconced in that mix of memory and potential is a really special feeling. I visit bookstores whenever I can, and was able to see a great many of them while traveling for work.
Opening a store was something I’d wanted to do for quite a while – I came close in Boston around 2014 – and when I ended up back in Cincinnati I decided to give it a go here. Northside was the only spot I seriously considered. It’s where I’d lived before leaving town, and where I saw myself settling after coming home. It’s just such a distinctive, neighborhoody place, with plenty of different things happening and all sorts of people but still a vibe that’s pretty uniquely its own.
The spot I found for Downbound is just about a block from Shake It (an absolutely world class record store, for any non-locals reading along), which has been drawing people to Northside for decades now. I really love how well our shops complement each other, and how frequently we have people popping over to Downbound with new records under their arms.
Indie Love
The absolute best thing about indie bookstores from an insider’s perspective is the generous and collaborative spirit of the community. Bookstores are ostensibly competitors, but the sharing of information and ideas is really amazing, especially this year when we’ve all had to learn and do so many new things to survive.
As to the Downbound community, I’m not so sure that’s even a thing yet! We’d been open less than five months when the pandemic forced our doors closed, and we’d only just started planning events, which are of course one of the major ways that a shop brings people together. Other than private shopping appointments that we offered in November and December, we’ve essentially been a website with a door for a year now. But I can say that the people who’ve found us so far are smart, generous, and very excited about books, authors, and ideas. If Downbound ever plays a part in bringing them together then we’d be thrilled.
The Downbound Vibe
I think great indie bookstores all feel like their own unique thing. The books they stock, the programming they offer, the ways they communicate, the feel of their physical spaces. There are so many different directions to go with all of those that once a shop hits its mix it’s almost certainly struck on a distinct identity. So in some ways whatever it may be that sets Downbound apart is also what we have in common with the others, in that we’re all our own.
Amongst bookstores around Cincinnati, I guess I’d say we work pretty hard to bring in books that people may not already be aware of, so that we can be a place for discovery and not just acquisition. That necessarily involves a point-of-view, which I’d like to think might eventually be something for which Downbound’s known.
Current Reads
For the last while now I’d say the book that I and my co-worker Sarah have been most excited to get in people’s hands is Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. The folks at West Virginia University Press are friends of mine and we pay close attention to what they do, so the book was one we were looking forward to, and we devoured an advance copy. It’s been terrific to see the book’s success – National Book Award Finalist! – and super gratifying to have so many people we pushed it on come back to tell us how much they loved it.
Looking Ahead
There are so many things I’m looking forward to! A huge part of our customer base found us after the pandemic began, so there are loads of people with whom we’ve regularly corresponded but have never met. It’s going to be great to welcome them to the store in person. I’m really looking forward to when we can start doing storytimes again for the kiddos. We’ll see what kind of events program we can build. Potentially some book clubs. But really the thing I’m most looking forward to is just being a bookstore again. Watching people enjoy the space and find new things, seeing curiosity piqued, fancies tickled. Can’t wait.
Check out Downbound’s website for ways to support this indie, and make sure to follow them on Instagram for all of their bookish updates and content!
Listen to Downbound’s first featured episode below, our conversation with author Jessica Strawser!