My bookmark collection

(Click the image to enlarge it.) I've collected bookmarks from independent bookstores for decades. I've scanned them all (over 1000!) and put them in online photo albums. In the albums, click on any bookmark to see it larger.

• California Bookstores (a few are in the image above)
• U.S. Bookstores outside California (A-L)
• U.S. Bookstores outside California (M-Z)
• International Bookstores (A-K)
• International Bookstores (L-Z)
• Wallace & Scott - Civil War
• Wallace & Scott - Ian Fleming

If you're a bookstore lover, I'm sure you recognize some of these, including many stores that have since closed.

Someday, I hope to put all of these scanned images in a proper website, searchable by name or city or state.

Of course, I began by simply saving bookstore bookmarks that I picked up when I visited bookstores. I still seek out bookstores when I travel.

In the 1970s and 1980s, I began writing to bookstores I heard about or found in the American Booksellers Association online directory. I would send them a self-addressed stamped envelope and ask for a bookmark. In those years, every bookstore had a store bookmark.

Sadly, there are fewer and fewer independent bookstores these days, and many no longer have store bookmarks. Now I email asking if they have a store bookmark and, if so, would they send me one if I send them a SASE.

It shouldn't have surprised me, but it did, when, in 2009, I found a website devoted to bookmarks, including a list of bookmark collectors interested in exchanging bookmarks with others! Of course, I added myself to that list, and since then, have exchanged bookmarks with folks in England, Spain, and Australia, as well as the U.S.

If you have bookstore bookmarks that I don't already have, I would love to hear from you! If you want to send them to me, here's my postal address:

Rodney Hoffman
P.O. Box 41768
Los Angeles, CA 90041