Photo by katmere

Huge local business news from the Washington Post’s Michael Rosenwald. Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade, owners of the storied independent bookstore Politics & Prose, have decided to put the shop up for sale.

Employees and longtime customers have been expecting this day with great trepidation for some time now. Both Cohen and Meade are now well into their 70s, and Cohen has been ill.

“It’s time for us to stop and let somebody else take over for the future,” Meade said during a quiet interview in the store’s cramped office. Cohen, eyes reddening, said, “I just don’t have the energy like I used to.”

Meade and Cohen conceded that their 60 employees are nervous, but the owners stressed that the sale should not be perceived as the store’s final chapter. Despite doom and gloom in the industry, Meade said, “There are no financial problems here. We make a good profit.”

It is impossible to overstate the stature of Politics & Prose in the D.C. literary scene. The store is widely considered a must-stop on any serious national book tour. And with the demise in recent years of other area independent bookstores like Olsson’s, Vertigo and Trover, P & P has been left to stand virtually alone in Washington amid drastic changes in the publishing and book selling worlds.

There’s no telling what the future of the store might be yet, but should some local with the means step forward to purchase it and keep it going in the same spirit, it’s not hard to imagine a small parade being thrown on Connecticut Avenue in their honor. Anyone wanna buy a bookstore?