Since 1989, A Cappella Books has been intown Atlanta’s only full-service general bookstore, buying and selling new, used, rare and out-of-print titles. Located in Atlanta’s bohemian neighborhood, Little 5 Points, we’re widely known for our selection of Beat literature, progressive political and counterculture books, and, as our name suggests, books about music. But we strive to carry important and unusual titles in most fields of interest.

• Our Staff
• Our Buying Policies
• Join the A Cappella Choir
• Author Signings and Book Events in The Opal Gallery
• The Internet and the World of Collectible Books
• Our Antiquarian Book Partners

Our Staff
Owner Frank Reiss started in the antiquarian book business at San Francisco’s Acorn Books in the early 1980s. His favorite writers include Charles Portis, Flannery O’Connor, Philip Roth, Wendell Berry and Nathanael West. He also has a deep interest in Ancient Greece and Rome, country music and baseball, all of which are reflected on the shelves of A Cappella Books. A past president of the Georgia Antiquarian Booksellers Association, Frank regularly reviews books and comments on book-related issues for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
frank@acappellabooks.com


In the not really so distant past Glen Thrasher spent his time making music, publishing fanzines, organizing noise festivals and spinning records at college radio stations. More recently he spends most of his time working at some little book store just “trying to survive while causing the least suffering possible.” All the while he gets louder and angrier and more radical in his thinking. This it not the way its supposed to go as a fellow reaches his declining years, but they know what they can do if they can’t take a joke. Glen’s reading list continues to get likewise louder, etc. and recently includes: Cornelius Castoriadis, James Howard Kunstler, Percival Everett, Jeffrey St. Clair, Ward Churchill, William Blum, Alfred F. Young, C.L.R. James, James Boggs, Walter Rodney, Dave Dellinger, I.F. Stone, Regis Debray, and always such masters as Joyce, Kafka, Borges, and Nabokov. glen@acappellabooks.com Read Glen's blog at http://glenthrasher.blogspot.com/

Chris Fanning is currently finishing up his MA in English for Northumbria University.  His thesis is about Bob Dylan and the traditional ballad.  After having spent the recent past dividing his time between England and America, it looks like Atlanta will be graced with his presence for the foreseeable future.  In his spare time he enjoys dabbling in music, academia, and travel.  Aside from Dylan, a few of his favorite writers include Salman Rushdie, John Steinbeck, T.S. Eliot, Oscar Wilde, and Edgar Allan Poe.  

Anne Vagts is a Wisconsin-born ATL transplant. She recently finished an Americorps term of service in the Atlanta Public School system where she worked with a team of volunteers as a tutor and after school program director. She is preparing to go back to school to earn a Masters Degree in Library Science. Like many A Cappella employees, Anne has a wide variety of book interests. However, she is a sucker for 19 th Century Fiction, folk tales, and Graphic Novels. Anne would also like to add that the secret ingredient to all Wisconsin cheeses (and to all Wisonsonites) is…PRIDE.

Beverly Bryan moved to Atlanta from Las Vegas, where she worked as a reporter at a community newspaper. She has lived on Long Island, in Brooklyn, and in Lancaster County in Pennsylvania, as well as much of south Florida. She wants to stop moving but she doesn't know how.  Her favorite book is The Tale of Genji by the Lady Murasaki Shikibu but, mostly, she reads a lot of trash.  Her articles on popular music and other matters of survival have appeared in random zines, actual newspapers and some glossy publications.   She loves the Internet, fancy beer and things that are old.

Courtney Conroy is a recent graduate of Georgia State University's English Department. She is pleased to join the A Cappella staff following a mild traumatic brain injury and a brief stint in the corporate world. She counts Nabokov, Marquez, Djuna Barnes and John Fowles among her favorite authors. In addition to fiction, she enjoys history, literary/cultural theory and movie musicals. When she is not pushing coffee or selling books, Courtney is contemplating grad school or other means of escape.
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Jes Gearing is a native Atlantan who self-identifies as a vegan, bicycle riding, wannabe poet.  She is finishing up her BA in English-Environmental Studies-Comparative Literature at Emory University, and will graduate as soon as she masters French and writes a thesis on a Deleuzian interpretation of Samuel Beckett's novel Molloy.  As can be imagined, it's going rather slow.  Her literary loves currently include (but are not limited to) Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, Richard Brautigan, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Annie Dillard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, William Faulkner, Seamus Heaney, James Joyce, Yusef Komunyakaa, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, and Natasha Trethewey.

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Our Buying Policies
We maintain the high quality of our stock by selective buying. We are always interested in buying individual books and large collections. For significant numbers we are happy to travel beyond the immediate Atlanta area. For smaller quantities we ask that you call ahead (404-681-5128) and bring them to us in Little Five Points. We offer 50% of our selling price in trade for used books in our shop. We offer at least 20% and up to 50% of our selling price in cash, with the salability and desirability of the individual book determining our percentage.

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Join the Choir
For almost two decades, in three different locations, A Cappella Books has maintained its unique place in Atlanta's ever-shifting cultural landscape. During that time, countless visitors have commented about how glad they are that we're still around doing what we do. Those comments warm our hearts, but in today's economy, with online bookstores and chain bookstores dominating the industry, they don't always provide the kind of support we could really use. Joining the A Cappella Choir does.

And it offers you the kind of discounts our bigger, deeper-pocketed competitors have been using to try and crush us.

Members of the A Cappella Choir receive discounts on every purchase from A Cappella Books. The percentage of your discount depends on the level at which you join.

A $100 membership equals $110 in store credit, or a 10% discount on every purchase.

A $500 membership equals $600 in store credit, or a 20% discount on every purchase.

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 The Opal Gallery
Next door in The Opal Gallery we host many author events and readings that are generally free and open to the Public. The Opal Gallery opened it's doors in February of 2008 with Atlanta-raised photographer Christy Bush's show Soundtrack to Nothing. Bush's photographs are also presented in a book that's fitted with a CD companion to the show (that features contribution by Michael Stipe of R.E.M., Adam Franklin of Swervedriver and Interpol drummer Sam Fog). The Soundtrack to Nothing book of photography and CD is available in Atlanta exclusively at A Cappella books for $40.00.

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The Internet and the World of Collectible Books
The past several years have seen the internet radically change the used, out-of-print and rare book market. Quite simply, the increased availability of titles through numerous web sites has made once-collectible books barely worth the paper they’re printed on. In some instances, of course, the internet has identified a demand for titles that had heretofore been virtually unheard of, and in the rarest of cases, the internet has created a bidding war among more collectors than before could have ever had access to genuinely rare books, causing their value to climb to astronomical heights.

A Cappella Books has been watching and responding to these trends since the beginning. Our shelves, unlike many traditional used bookstores, aren’t sagging under the weight of the common titles you can find on the internet for pennies. Our used and out-of-print books are priced extremely competitively, and our collectibles are books that not only have maintained value in these historically deflationary times, but whose relative scarcity and intrinsic cultural and literary importance insulate them from the market forces affecting the overwhelming majority of books published in the last 70 years.

Our Antiquarian Book Partners
The changing world of antiquarian books has seen stores like ours closing down all over the country. In the past decade, Atlanta lost two of its finest: The Old New York Book Shop in Midtown and Yesteryear Books in Buckhead. These fine dealers’ stores are no longer, but their proprietors, Cliff Graubart and Frank Walsh are still actively buying and selling fine books in all fields, and in the glass cases at the rear of our store you can admire--and purchase--a select few of their finest books.

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