“Sharing a block with the punk bar Continental in the East Village,” St. Mark’s Books is “a holdout Manhattan indie that caters to a hip, lit-savvy crowd and college students looking for the kinds of books that can get lost on the shelves of bigbox retailers.” In a profile of the shop for The Book Standard, Patrick J. Eves notes the 2,700 square foot store “is so compact that when an author comes by, it’s to privately sign books the store has in inventory that will be sold later” — for example, manager Michael Russo “When Everything Is Illuminated came out in cloth, Jonathan Safran Foer came in to sign copies and drew a hand shape on the title page on what must have been close to 50 copies. That sort of thing makes us special. If you came in at the right time you would have gotten a special version of that book.”