Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park has the reputation of an institution. Founded in the 1950s by peace activist Roy Kepler, it was once a gathering place for Beat thinkers, Stanford students, and even early performances by the Grateful Dead.
But when I sat down with Community Engagement Officer (CEO) Praveen Madan last year, that history wasn’t what stayed with me most. What stood out was a simple idea: Kepler’s isn’t trying to build the best bookstore around books. It’s trying to build the best bookstore around its people.
When Praveen first became involved with Kepler’s, he came from the corporate world and had never run a bookstore before. The store had faced closure before—most dramatically in 2005, when news of the shutdown sparked protests and drew thousands into the plaza outside.
By the time Praveen arrived in late 2011, the situation was quieter but no less urgent. The board had again decided to close the store, this time before the news had spread publicly. What followed wasn’t a public outcry, but months of behind-the-scenes work: restructuring debts, raising funds, and reimagining what the bookstore could be. The message, even then, was clear: this place mattered.
Soon Praveen found himself stepping into the vacuum of leadership. “There wasn’t really an owner,” he told me. “They just expected me to run it.”
What followed was less a rescue than a reinvention.
Praveen believes the real competitive advantage of an independent bookstore isn’t price, inventory size, or logistics. It’s the staff. “Our biggest asset is our people,” he explained. The booksellers are the first line of curation—the people who decide what appears on the shelves and what gets recommended to readers.
And at Kepler’s, that curation shows. Though the store itself isn’t enormous, almost every shelf intrigues: literature in translation, unusual small-press titles, books about nonviolence or sustainability, unexpected staff picks.
Praveen described a constant gravitational pull in bookselling. If you’re not careful, the catalogs of the biggest publishers can quietly take over your shelves. “They have the big sales teams, the big titles,” he said. “If you’re not paying attention, the Big Five will consume your store.” Kepler’s fights that gravity intentionally, highlighting independent presses, diverse voices, and books that might otherwise be overlooked.
One bookseller, Jasmine, described their approach this way: they feature “not the sparkly famous person book for kids, the beautiful one that you’ll love in 50 years.”
They pay attention to what people want, but also to what they believe people might need. A good bookstore finds the balance between both. Each year they even publish a holiday list of 80 staff recommendations, a customer favorite.
But building a staff capable of that kind of curation requires something bookstores have historically struggled to offer: decent wages.
So Kepler’s made an unusual decision. Instead of maximizing profit, they decided to maximize wages. The store aims to devote roughly 35% of its revenue to staff compensation, far higher than the industry norm.
To make that work, they experimented with creative solutions: a voluntary living-wage surcharge, a membership program, and perhaps most significantly, a structural innovation. Kepler’s spun off its extensive author-events program into a nonprofit—the Kepler’s Literary Foundation—so the bookstore itself wouldn’t have to subsidize those events with retail profits.
The result is a hybrid model that has drawn attention from bookstores across the country, and the Reimagine Bookstores campaign, which Praveen helps lead.
Standing in the store, watching customers browse shelves curated by booksellers who love what they do and feel well-supported, the logic seems obvious. If you want a great bookstore, you start by taking care of its people.
Scott Lambridis is a novelist based in Bellingham, Washington. A former indie press founder, performance series organizer, olive farmer, and progressive rocker, he studied neurobiology at the University of Virginia, earned an MFA from San Francisco State University, and read a book from every country in the world. His debut novel, St. Ulphia’s Dead, is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing on July 7, 2026. Learn more at scottlambridis.com
