Independent bookshop · Marana, Arizona
More books, in more hands.
Second chances for perfectly good books.
Independent bookshop · Marana, Arizona
Second chances for perfectly good books.
What we do
We buy new books that came out of the printer imperfect — crooked trims, bumped corners, misprinted covers, proof copies nobody was allowed to sell — and we sell them at a discount with the flaw written right into the listing. The writer gets paid for a box that was headed for the recycling, and somebody gets a book they wanted for less than it costs new.
Indie, BIPOC, queer, and minority authors make up our shelves. They’re not a themed display near the register. They’re most of what we carry.
The two of us
We’re Travis and James.
Two husbands and two dads from Marana, Arizona. Travis is a pharmacist here in town. James is an American Sign Language interpreter. Errata is queer-owned and veteran-owned.
Between the two of us the shelves run from epic fantasy and space opera to true crime and psychological thrillers, so expect a little of everything.
Neither of us has ever run a bookstore. What we’ve got is a town without one, and we’re too stubborn to leave it that way. So we’re starting here, a box of books at a time.
What we’re building
Marana doesn’t have an independent bookstore.
Right now Errata is a pop-up and an online shop. What we’re saving for is a real room: shelves worth browsing, coffee, poetry nights and open mics, doors open past seven in a town where everything closes at seven, and somewhere for kids to land after school. Every book we buy and sell gets us closer.
The name
The list of mistakes found in a book after it has already gone to press. Traditionally printed on a slip tucked inside the cover, or on a page at the very back.
The slip is a real object. Someone catches the mistake after the run is printed, sets the correction, runs it off on a loose sheet, and tucks it into the cover by hand. Nobody pulps the books. They go out with the apology tucked inside.
We took the name from that. It’s an old, unglamorous piece of publishing that assumes a flawed copy is still worth putting in someone’s hands. We think so too.
