How is a bookstore born? How does it maintain itself and evolve over time? Cecilia Fanti details the dynamics of catalog selection and organization based on her daily encounters with her readers: the returning ones, who are like friends and accept recommendations; the new ones, who sometimes want a nonexistent book; or the thieves, who are always improving their technique. While she takes orders or returns and chooses the titles that will go to the window or the new arrivals table, in this book we gain insight into the complexity—the delicacy—of the craft on which all the players in the literary universe depend.

"A catalog is never closed. Primarily because book production never stops. In its construction, there was a sensitivity and an aesthetic decision that later defined the bookstore's work ethic." —Cecilia Fanti

"The bookstore is the physical space where the book unfolds and expands. But it doesn't just act as a sounding board—and cash register—it also serves as a platform for the reader to explore. It is also its fourth dimension, that perpendicular fold that transforms it into a building and makes possible the leap from the box to the house, from paper to brick, from solitude to encounter, from the wink to dissemination. —Luigi Amara