\n<\/p>\n
When the writer and professor Amitava Kumar invited the book scout Erin Edmison to his reading at McNally Jackson Books\u2019 Seaport location in February, Ms. Edmison penciled it into her calendar and \u201cdidn\u2019t think twice about it,\u201d she said, \u201cbecause I am old, and that\u2019s the way things used to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the night of the reading, she arrived at the bookstore to discover that she needed a $5 ticket to the event, which was sold out. \u201cIt didn\u2019t even occur to me,\u201d Ms. Edmison, 48, said.<\/p>\n
She got in eventually. After a brief wait near the cash register with the other walk-ins, Ms. Edmison was able to stand in the back of the room. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a big deal,\u201d she said. She was happy to see that Mr. Kumar<\/a>, who is a friend, had a packed house.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In the New York of the recent past, readings were events one could wander into, perhaps as a recent college graduate aspiring to be a published writer or simply looking for something to do. But these days, McNally Jackson and a handful of other independent bookstores across the city have begun requiring people to buy tickets or R.S.V.P. to attend readings. Tickets can cost anywhere from a few bucks to some $30, depending on whether you buy the book, too, sometimes rolled into the price.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n New Yorkers may have gotten used to the idea that nothing in the city is ever really free and that everything is hard to get into. Nonetheless, some have begun to wonder: What changed?<\/p>\n \u201cRecently, attendance has been extremely up,\u201d said Mikaela Dery, the director of programming at McNally Jackson, which has multiple locations around the city. \u201cAt least half of our events sell out. Often, we have weeks where every single event is sold out. And we have three or four events a week.\u201d<\/p>\n The bookstore started its reservation system when it reopened as pandemic pandemic lockdowns eased \u2014 as the staff was careful not to overcrowd the room. But McNally Jackson, as well as other bookstores including Books Are Magic and the newer P&T Knitwear, adopted it as a long-term policy as a way to prevent no-shows.<\/p>\n Crowded rooms, though, are still a consideration. Readings \u2014 and not just at bookstores, but at bars, galleries and parties, too \u2014 seem to be more popular than ever.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n On a Tuesday night in late March, the poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib drew 350 people for a 10 p.m. reading and Q. and A. at the Bell House, a performance venue in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, to promote his new book<\/a> \u201cThere\u2019s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension.\u201d (The late-night event was added after an earlier 350-person reading with the critic Wesley Morris sold out in a matter of hours.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But you don\u2019t need to be a big name to fill a room. Over the years, less established writers have found large audiences at readings hosted by upstart magazines like The Drift<\/a> and Cake Zine<\/a>, which typically ask a few of their contributors to read in the earlier hours of their raucous parties.<\/p>\n Some of these readings cost money, too: Drift parties are free for subscribers, but otherwise tickets are $20 at the door and include the latest print issue. Cake Zine\u2019s events were free until recently; at its issue party last summer, at Public Records, the space quickly reached its 500-person capacity, and people lined up down the block, said Aliza Abarbanel, a founding editor at the magazine. For the launch of the magazine\u2019s winter issue, she and her co-editor, Tanya Bush, charged $15 for tickets.<\/p>\n Readings became a way \u201cfor people to ease back into social life\u201d as Covid began to recede, said Whitney Mallett, the founder of The Whitney Review of New Writing, a biannual print magazine with shortform criticism and essays. And for a younger generation especially they can play a large role in social life.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sure kids still go to shows at Baby\u2019s All Right and places like that,\u201d Ms. Mallett said, though that Williamsburg concert hall has also hosted a few literary magazine parties recently. \u201cMaybe readings have replaced that to some degree \u2014 it seems more contemporary. To go see someone\u2019s indie rock band play doesn\u2019t feel as of this era.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It used to be that readings were a source of some grumbling, not because people couldn\u2019t get in, but because they didn\u2019t want to go. \u201cYou dread going to readings \u2014 they can be so boring,\u201d the memoirist Priscilla Gilman, a child of literary New York<\/a>, said. Lately, she noted, events have been more inventive, with things like food and cocktail pairings.<\/p>\n Bars like Pete\u2019s Candy Store, Franklin Park and KGB<\/a> have hosted readings for years. But chefs and restaurateurs have brought the events to new, upscale spaces, too. Tables of Contents, a reading series founded by the chef Evan Hanczor more than a decade ago, has become a mainstay on the literary event circuit and takes place each month at rotating venues such as the Ace Hotel in Brooklyn. The series\u2019s upcoming 60-seat event \u2014 with dishes inspired by each reading \u2014 sold out within an hour of being announced, Mr. Hanczor said.<\/p>\n The fashion world has taken notice, too. Rachel Comey hosted a reading<\/a> with The New York Review of Books last year. And in February, Ms. Mallett hosted a Whitney Review reading at the Comme des Gar\u00e7ons store in Chelsea.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Abdurraqib said he wanted to treat his book launch more like an \u201calbum release show or a concert,\u201d and for it to feel for the audience \u201cas though you\u2019re settling into the end of a night hanging at your friend\u2019s house, when a party kind of winds down and people aren\u2019t leaving.\u201d And in fact no one wanted to: The author signed books past midnight.<\/p>\n When literary events become trendy scenes, there are usually at least a few people who bemoan the loss of a seemingly bygone serious reading culture. (Some writers reading their work aloud are \u201cnot necessarily in it to publish books,\u201d Ms. Mallett said, \u201cor books are just another part of selling a persona \u2014 there\u2019s a lot of social media stars.\u201d)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But the landscape of readings in New York has always been varied, encapsulating both underground, D.I.Y.-ish performances and more professionalized gatherings.<\/p>\n The writer Lucy Sante remembered participating in poetry readings inside church basements and coffee houses as a high school student in the early 1970s. \u201cWhen I was writing my first book, \u2018Low Life,\u2019 I tried out bits reading them at Mona\u2019s bar on Avenue B,\u201d Ms. Sante said.<\/p>\n Downtown bars like Sophie\u2019s, Chumley\u2019s and Phebe\u2019s had reading series, as did CBGB, around the same time (on Sunday nights). There were also readings in art galleries, and \u201creadings given under the auspices of downtown magazines like Between C&D,\u201d Ms. Sante said, noting that Between C&D, which was on the Lower East Side, was \u201clike two people operating out of their apartment,\u201d similar to today\u2019s indie publications run by twenty-somethings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In a more cash-flush era of book publishing, in the 1980s and \u201990s, releasing a book often involved parties uptown where authors would be feted at editors\u2019 and agents\u2019 apartments, Ms. Gilman, the memoirist, said. (Those gatherings did not usually include a reading.)<\/p>\n Today, most readings are not so ritzy, and what draws people to them is not the promise of a fancy cocktail or an hors d\u2019oeuvre.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For many writers, they\u2019re \u201can outlet to share this thing that might otherwise be seen as nerdy or a solitary pursuit,\u201d said Leah Abrams, 25 who with a fellow writer, Heather Akumiah, 29, runs a series called Limousine Readings.<\/p>\n At a night of readings on Thursday in celebration of Cake Zine\u2019s second anniversary, Ms. Abarbanel said a few people approached her to say they were inspired to go home and write immediately after the event.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s probably the best feedback I could hear,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n