Left Bank Books Collective records, approximately 1973-2015

Left Bank Books was founded in 1973 by a group of workers who split off from the University District's Red and Black Books to form their own collective bookstore in the Pike Place Market. The two projects continued as separate but mutually supportive projects until the mid 1990s, when Red and Black closed. For much of the 1980s and 1990s, the Left Bank Books Collective expanded to include two other projects: AKA Books, a used bookstore in Seattle's University District, as well as a wholesale distribution and mail order project known as Left Bank Distribution. Neither of these projects exists today due to financial problems and rental situations in Seattle.

Left Bank is collectively owned and operated by its workers, and has been since its inception. As an anarchist collective, Left Bank has no bosses or managers. Decisions are made in bi-monthly collective meetings based on a consensus process. Left Bank Books still operates out of a Pike Place Market storefront.

Left Bank Books was founded as a small collective. In the late 1990s, Left Bank Books became registered as a federal corporation so that in the event of financial difficulty at the store, individual employees would not be held financially responsible. Left Bank Books is not federally registered as a non-profit.

Left Bank Distribution, or LBD, was a project started by the Left Bank Books collective in 1980 and ended in 2001. LBD was a book distribution project that provided direct mail-order service of radical book, zines and magazines to individuals and bookstores during the 1980s and 1990s. LBD was a wholesale distributor of radical and alternative books, pamphlets, magazines and zines to independent bookstores, tabling projects, libraries and other organizations, and individuals, mail order catalog. LBD offered one of the largest selections of anarchist & radical books in the world. Corporatization of the bookstore and distribution industry beginning in the late 1990s led to the proliferation of chain bookstores and put many independent bookstores out of business.

Source: https://www.leftbankbooks.com/aboutUs.php#history