Ed Koster closed David’s Books in June after a twenty-seven-year run. The bookstore, founded in the late 1970s by David Kozubei, had occupied a series of spaces on Liberty and State streets.
Koster is philosophical about the closure. “The rent was going up and the profit from the books was going down,” he says. “I guess the landlord just wanted to pursue a higher-paying tenant.”
David’s–and Koster’s–biggest claim to fame may be the mural that still graces its next-to-last location, the corner of Liberty and State. Featuring portraits of authors Woody Allen, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Hesse, Franz Kafka, and Anais Nin, it seems ideal for a bookstore, but Koster modestly credits both the idea and the choice of authors to local artist Richard Wolk.
Koster, fifty-seven, says he doesn’t know what he’ll do next, but he does plan to put David’s Books online eventually. That will be with a new inventory, though, since he’s getting rid of all the books that didn’t sell during his going-out-of-business sale. “I can’t afford to store [them],” he says.
davidsbooksonline.com
