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Local writer, Shaman Drum manager describes growth of an independent

By Elizabeth Lucas
Daily Arts Writer

Probably every University student knows about buying textbooks at Shaman Drum: going through an almost hidden door, up a narrow flight of stairs, and then into rooms filled with books.

It's a unique Ann Arbor experience, and could also be a metaphor for the story of Shaman Drum itself -- there's much more to this bookshop than a casual observer would notice.

Keith Taylor, the manager of Shaman Drum, recounted the store's history in an interview with The Michigan Daily. Shaman Drum was opened by Karl Pohrt in 1980, and Taylor began working there in 1989, after eight years working for Borders. Two years ago, Shaman Drum moved from the upstairs area to its present downstairs space.

"We just had those two rooms," Taylor remembered with a laugh. "We used to have to take one of them down when we sold textbooks, then we had to put it all back up again."

That unusual location would be enough to set Shaman Drum apart, but other features give it a distinct place among Ann Arbor bookstores. Taylor emphasized the fact that unlike most of its competitors, Shaman Drum is an independent bookstore.

"Right now, the fashion in the book business is to be like Borders -- these big, mall-like stores," Taylor said. "But I hope we can survive long enough to see the fashions change."

Taylor explained the secret of Shaman Drum's success. "The standard line for independent bookshops now, all across the country -- most of which are going out of business -- is that you have to find a niche. We've tried to pick several sections in Borders that we can do better at: poetry, anthropology, literary criticism, classics. Quite frankly, if we tried to cover as much as they do, we couldn't do it as well, but we can pick certain sidelines and do a better job."

In the Borders-Shaman Drum rivalry that Taylor describes, Shaman Drum is at a certain disadvantage because of its smaller size. "Borders has a much bigger support system," Taylor said. "I have friends who work there still, and it's almost as if we do different things for a living. Here, I'm pricing the books, putting the books in customers' hands, sending back defective books ... you have to do everything here, at all levels."

But one Shaman Drum specialty that Borders doesn't share, however, is selling students textbooks. Taylor said proudly, "I don't know of any other store in the country with the same percentage of textbook sales, that's set up like ours. They're over half of our sales, and they've basically allowed us to keep this thing afloat."

Shaman Drum's clientele is fairly different from the norm, as well. Taylor drew another comparison to Borders: "Any store as large as Borders, you're going to alienate people. But one of the things that allowed us to start this place was that we had a base of customers. "

Taylor continued, "We're tied to two communities: the University of Michigan, and the city- and state-wide literary community. In many ways, these are not the writers who are the best-known. Jim Harrison, say; we're Jim Harrison's bookshop."

Having a regular group of customers helps to publicize Shaman Drum, too. "We rely a lot on word-of-mouth," Taylor said. "And if you do things that are interesting enough to the community around you, they have to pay attention to you -- like the readings we do. To get a writer like Jamaica Kincaid, who wanted to come here and not to a chain store -- that's a great boost." (Kincaid's Jan. 29 reading at the Michigan Union was arranged by Shaman Drum.)

Book signings and readings are one way for Shaman Drum to reciprocate their word-of-mouth publicity. Taylor said that Karl Pohrt, the store's owner, had held book signings there since the early '80s, but that readings became more common when the store changed location.

"We moved down here thinking, `We can get 30 or 50 people in here, won't that be nice,'" Taylor said wryly. "Yeah, nice idea. The trouble is, we get a hundred people. It's a lot more popular than we thought it was going to be."

Taylor described how a different group of people can be seen at every reading. "Gary Snyder, for example, is a writer with a certain cult following ... and the whole cult came down. Then Jamaica Kincaid came, and there were many regulars there, but there wasn't much overlap with the Gary Snyder crowd."

Readings are also the newest point of contention between Borders and Shaman Drum. "There's direct competition, because sometimes Borders will be angry we got a certain person and they didn't," Taylor said.

"They didn't use to do readings at all, and I didn't think that they were competing with us -- I thought we were too small. But when they discounted the Jamaica Kincaid book ("The Autobiography of My Mother") by 30 percent after the reading, that was definitely choosing to compete with us."

Shaman Drum's readings influence many other areas of the literary community. Taylor is himself a writer who has published four collections of poetry and one book of short stories.

He stated that the bookstore tries to publicize the works of lesser-known writers in the Ann Arbor area. Taylor named local writers Tom Lynch, Bob Hicok, Charles Baxter, and Alice Fulton as some of those who have read at Shaman Drum in the past.

Some Shaman Drum regulars have achieved wider success. Taylor cited University alum Laura Kasischke as one example of this phenomenon.

"She came here as an undergraduate, won a slew of Hopwoods, went all the way through her MFA at Michigan ... Now she's got two award-winning books of poetry and this gigantic novel coming out. Here's somebody I've known as a writer since she was 18. She's been a part of the community, one way or another, and is now part of the broader literary community, and that's particularly gratifying. To be around people as they're just doing the writing that gets them the big reputation, that's a great feeling."

Shaman Drum, as one of the last independent bookstores in Ann Arbor, is also one of the last places to provide this type of literary community.

"There are definitely fewer bookshops now than when I arrived here, in 1980," Taylor said. "By the mid-'80s things were changing, and by 1990 Ann Arbor had come to pretty much reflect the book business in the rest of the country."

Taylor related this to an overall change in the community. "Ann Arbor, on the whole, is a lot less of a college town. There are a lot of wealthy people in high-tech industries who choose to live here, and they're more prone to shop at Borders. Also, many people here still think of Borders as an Ann Arbor store, when it's not anymore, and hasn't been for five years."

Still, Taylor believes that Shaman Drum can continue as an example of a flourishing independent bookshop.