When a customer walks into Judging by the Cover, they are able to enter worlds crafted by the words of authors of varying backgrounds, nothing is considered too taboo or unimportant.
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking,” a quote by Haruki Murakami on their website.
This bookstore specializes in pushing out books that are produced by authors of LGBTQ+ and BIPOC backgrounds.
The indie bookstore located in Chinatown/Downtown Fresno had their ribbon cutting ceremony on Nov. 1. The eclectic store is run by Sanger native, Ashley Mireles-Guerrero, alongside their husband Carlos Guerrero. It’s featured in the “The Pop-Up Place” building and shares the space with Vintage Drip Clothing.
According to an article by the Business Journal, “The Pop-Up Place” was created to encourage budding business owners and start ups by offering them free rent for the first six months of operating. After that period ends, the business owners are offered further support with workshops and guidance for prospering their business.
This is an effort to bring new life to Fresno’s Chinatown.
The grand opening had a sizable crowd, flowing in and out of the small and cozy nook where they sell their books and other merchandise. Some of which included products like the Queer Tarot and other products.
According to one attendee of the event, Grace Miguel, she was waiting for a new local bookstore to be accessible for her.
“When you want to put your money into local business, shopping at Barnes & Noble is not really going to do that,” Miguel said. She detailed being excited that an independent bookstore was finally available in the Central Valley, especially in Fresno.
Living outside of Fresno, Miguel said she and her sibling Westley, had to take a bus to get to the grand opening.
“It’s a community event. I’ve been wanting to get out more and go to these community events, meet people and support smaller businesses,” Westley said.
The idea of community and togetherness seems to be a driving force behind this whole event, and an ideal the bookstore is trying to cultivate.
The company’s new brick and mortar’s location was highly important, according to the owner, Guerrero.
“We wanted to be in South Fresno, because we thought it was important that folks in this area have literature around them,” Guerrero said.
The business owner said part of the reason they went the publishing route was because of an early experience where author Gary Soto went to Sanger and spoke to kids at their schools. It helped Guerrero discover the pipeline from books to creating a potential career from that.
Guerrero said they want the same for kids, for them to understand they too can have a career with books whether it be by aspiring to be an author, book cover designer, or being a writer.
Judging a Book by the Cover, admittedly does not have a full staff or team, according to Guerrero. They shared that they have relied on friends and customers for recommendations of what are good books for topics they didn’t have firsthand knowledge of.
“A lot of it is the community [which] is our team,” Guerrero said.
When it comes to making business decisions such as sourcing books, Guerrero shared their experience working with anarchist press companies.
“You literally have to call them on the phone, tell them what you’re ordering and they just trust that you’re going to pay them eventually,” they said.
Guerrero explained how anarchist companies produce books just for the sake of getting the information out there, even if it’s at a financial loss for them.
“They are kind of rejecting the capitalist norm of publishing, where they don’t want to work with Amazon,” Guerrero said, or larger corporations.
As an indie bookstore, they aspire to work with those publishers “as they put out information for the sake of putting out information, not for the sake of profit.”
Guerrero shared they and their husband both still have their day jobs in publishing outside of building the business.
“There’s so many different books .. and so many different options. It never really feels boring. There’s always something new to do,” Guerrero said.
Judging a Book by the Cover, has a full catalog online, and its storefront is located at 1029 F St.
Fresno, CA 93706.
Hours of operation are also listed on their website.
