Named after the Bushwick bookstore Aaron Cometbus owns, Human Relations collects stories and anecdotes celebrating the shop's tenth year.

Human relations are difficult. Particularly for book people.

When we started this partnership, they said it couldn't be done. All our bookstore mentors warned, "People change. You're going to fight. You're going to hate each other. It will all end in flames. Trust us, human relations are difficult."

Ten years later we're still here. We could give credit to the years of therapy, meditation, and so-called "work" we did on ourselves, or just to the mellowing that comes with age. We could also chalk up our continued existence to you customers, who've stood by us through rain, sleet, snow and plague.

But let's be honest, it's not just you, and it definitely isn't us. The reason we're still here despite our sub-par human relations is the books themselves. The popular narrative of the endangered independent bookstore has largely been propagated by people who devote more love to social media than they do to the lit they put on their shelves. At HR there are no bells and whistles. No cat, no typewriter, no inspirational quotes about failing better adorn our walls. We've always been about the books, and to mark our ten-year anniversary we decided to make a publication that celebrates them.

Author: Aaron Cometbus / various
Publisher: self-published
Pages: 90pp
Size: 5 x 6.5
Notes: softcover, b/w, limited
Edition: 500
Release Date: May 2022