Imprints Booksellers

Jason Lake never expected to work in the same place for 20 years. Now, as co-owner of Imprints Booksellers, he’s hoping to stay for many more.

The shop opened in 1984, and moved to its current home in 1999. The bright, airy shopfront is lined with solid wooden shelves. Depending on who you ask, it was once a pizza place, a gentlemen’s sauna, or an early purveyor of virtual reality equipment.

Over the years, Imprints has held strong on an ever-changing Hindley Street – a living, working monument to bookselling as a service; an ongoing relationship; an element in the community.

There are only three staff members. Together they curate, and consider themselves responsible for, what lies upon the shelves.

There’s a wide range of fiction, periodicals, and books on music, politics and more. The selection changes over time – the birth of a child heralds an influx of children’s books, while architecture and design sections expand with the closure of a specialty store nearby. The emphasis is on those precious things that you can’t buy online.