In the parking lot behind Roebling Books & Coffee in Covington, 40 cyclists gather on a hot August evening in tribute to Gloria San Miguel, an avid cyclist, mother and manager at Roebling, who died in a bicycle accident on Aug. 20, 2022. The ride commemorates Gloria’s spirit and is part of the greater story of a bookstore.
Richard Hunt, the owner of Roebling Books & Coffee and a cyclist, sees the responsibility of the store going beyond selling books and coffee—finding ways to support the communities it serves. “Richard leads by example,” says Jason Reser of the Cincinnati Off-Road Alliance. “His choice to commute on two wheels isn’t just a personal preference. Hunt’s commitment bridges future generations and aspirations.”
With local cities, nonprofits and state officials, a concept of safe lanes for cyclists and pedestrians is emerging in cities along the Ohio River. In supporting the Cincinnati Off-Road Alliance, Hunt shows his commitment to the community in which he resides, works and cycles.
A native of the North Royalton suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, Hunt worked in New York publishing for 15 years before he sought a quieter location to raise his family. In 1997, he joined F&W Publications in Cincinnati as vice president of sales and marketing. For the next 10 years, Hunt created and ran several independent publishing companies while solidifying his place in the Greater Cincinnati literary scene. His love of outdoor sports such as cycling and hiking led him to create AdventureKEEN, a publishing firm focused on all things outdoors. In Covington, he found a home for the business…and so much more.
From a Bridge Builder’s Office to a Bookstore
Amid shelves filled with biographies and memoirs, a window in Roebling Books & Coffee’s original location in Covington looks out on the south tower of the Roebling Suspension Bridge with its ornate top finials. Hunt muses that could be the window John A. Roebling looked through to manage construction of his innovative bridge from 1856-1867. Since that time, the building has served many functions, including the Kenton County Legal Aid office, until 2008, when Hunt moved AdventureKEEN into the space.
The nature of publishing requires sustained concentration. Most of the staff opted for quiet upstairs offices with sturdy bookshelves meant for heavy law journals. As the publishing company grew, Hunt renovated the old building. His experience in bookstore start-ups lent itself to a vision of repurposed Blockbuster video shelves in what he called “godawful colors” to populate the first floor to showcase KEEN titles. Neighbors took notice as the building at the corner of East Third and Greenup began to buzz with activity.
“I extrapolated the role books had on my life and wanted to provide the same for others; therefore, building upon the notion of a book as personal extension of self, learning, establishing a place and role in the world to give to others,” Hunt says of his love for books that lead him to open the bookstore in 2010. Cozy rooms were created for community gatherings or pulling a book from a shelf and sipping coffee.
Today, the Covington location bustles with coffee drinkers, activists, businesspeople, tourists curious about the iconic bridge, and those in hunt of the perfect read. AdventureKEEN and other imprints that Hunt has acquired inhabit offices on the second floor, but the maze of rooms on the first floor is the heartbeat of the Licking Riverside neighborhood.
Branching Out
A vacant gas station in Newport came to life in 2021, when the building’s new owners and Hunt agreed that it would be a great place for a second bookstore location. Only a mile and a half separate the two locales. Hunt believed that, across the divide of the Licking River, a bridge could connect the literary world with a community thirsting for words. A former service bay is filled with tall shelves—some moveable for large gatherings such as open-mic nights and author readings. State Rep. Rachel Roberts, a resident of Newport, says, “It’s like a dream come true to have a coffee shop and independent bookseller just steps from my front door.”
When tornadoes devastated Western Kentucky in December 2021, Roberts issued a call for supplies. Her porch quickly filled to overflowing with donations. “I contacted Hunt and asked if Roebling in Newport could be a drop-off point,” she says. “He and the staff could not have been more generous. Every hour or so, I picked up donations from their sheltered entry, filling truckloads of supplies and caravanning to the areas of need. We did the same when floods hit Eastern Kentucky [in the summer of 2022].”
A different story unfolded when Roebling Books opened its Dayton, Kentucky, location in April. Julia Keister, the owner of Lil’s Bagels, went to Hunt asking for a job when rent increases forced the popular eatery to close in Covington. Neighbors for many years, Lil’s and Roebling Books reimagined their relationship. “Joining forces with Roebling has been an amazing experience. Roebling and Lil’s always felt like one family, so being able to truly live and grow together has felt like a dream come true,” Keister says. “People often think that the collaboration meant that Lil’s [Kitchen] was simply behind the new food program that you see at Dayton and Newport, but the intertwining is actually way deeper.
“People from the Lil’s crew are now booksellers, baristas, event specialists, retail buyers and a little bit of everything in between. While it can be a challenge for any two groups to merge—and there definitely have been some bumps—I believe our joint ‘community-first’ mission is what has made the experience so meaningful and powerful and will continue to do so going forward.”
Links to the Dayton community start with The Lodge KY, a rental space for recording musicians, artists and photographers across the street from Roebling Books. Musicians and artists now have access to food, drink, and stacks of rare and used books just a few steps away. Scott Beseler, owner of The Lodge KY, has long awaited a community partner in proximity. “Since the first day Roebling opened on our block, there has been a noticeable increase in foot traffic and new faces,” he says. “They are a catalyst of positivity, and I am so happy to have them as neighbors.
“Tentacles in the community are born out of this place.”
The books of Gurney Norman, Pauletta Hansel, Richard Taylor, bell hooks, Robert Gipe, Silas House, and numerous other Kentucky writers grace the shelves of Roebling Books. The Covington and Newport locations carry titles of other notable Kentuckians such as Robert Penn Warren and Wendell Berry-signed first editions.
Like other regional authors, Ron Ellis, author of Cogan’s Woods and Yonder: Tales From an Outdoor Life, found Roebling to be more than just a bookstore. On any given day, he meets with other creatives there with an eye toward launching others in their pursuits. He is a founding member of Gugel Alley Writers, the brainchild of two other local writers. Ellis points out that Roebling connects to Cincinnati through the Books by the Banks book festival, The Mercantile Library and The Literary Club of Cincinnati.
Author Ann Hagedorn, whose latest narrative nonfiction book is Sleeper Agent: The Atomic Spy in America Who Got Away, sees Roebling Books & Coffee as “a true gift, partly because it exudes such a fabulous aura of homelike warmth mixed with adventure. It’s a delightful store, where piles of books cover every table and bookshelves stir the fine art of browsing, while the wondrous owner and well-read staff members entice readers and champion authors. I’m honored that they stock my books and respect my work as an author. What an inspiration it is to know that Roebling Books & Coffee always awaits my next book!”
Sheila Williams, a novelist and librettist, began work on an opera called Fierce by conducting sessions with students from Music Resource Center Cincinnati and WordPlay Cincy. Shannon Eggleston, executive director of the Union, Kentucky-based I.Imagine Photography nonprofit that provides photography-based education to students, gathered a team of young women to photograph a few of Williams’ sessions. Eggleston and Williams attribute their association with Roebling as the connection that brought them together.
The artistic publications of Larkspur Press from Owenton have a prominent place at Roebling Books in a gesture of support of other publishers. Hunt believes that “Kentucky has a remarkable literary history, which continues on through today’s authors and artists, so it’s been reaffirming to gain the opportunity to showcase that legacy on Roebling’s shelves.”
What the Future Holds
“Having just turned 65, I’m about as far from retiring now as when I started at Bantam Books in 1982,” Hunt says. And it shows, as Roebling takes part in community events—be it the Victorian Christmas Tour & Tea in Newport or an art and music street fair in Dayton. Hunt advocates for free speech and the freedom to read as an employer, taxpayer and supporter of other indie businesses. Neighborhood revitalization groups, countless small businesses and organizations such as Kentuckians for The Commonwealth have a place at Roebling Books & Coffee.
In the short term, Hunt is working on a Go with Glo Memorial Park outside the Covington bookstore location to honor Gloria San Miguel and to raise awareness for safer streets for cyclists and pedestrians. The vision of thriving bookstores also is top of mind. Hunt plans to have employees take ownership of Roebling sometime in the next five to 10 years.
A legacy of generosity flows through the communities touched by Roebling Books & Coffee along the Ohio River. Roebling truly bridges beans, books and beings, as it proclaims on its website.
Q&A with Richard Hunt
Richard Hunt’s 40-plus years in the publishing industry began when he received the first Oscar Dystel Fellowship at New York University in 1982. Since then, he has become an authority on the changing world of book publishing. Tina Neyer spoke with him about that world and his viewpoint on artificial intelligence.
Tina Neyer: What has been the conventional wisdom about the book industry from your vantage point?
Richard Hunt: Initially, as I was thinking about whether I should go with the Dystel Fellowship or pursue a creative writing degree, I tried to imagine the long tail of each, and, at least for me, publishing easily won out.
At least based on authors I was reading who had a significant oeuvre and good reviews, writing 20 books across their careers, [they] seemed like all-stars. Whereas an editor usually has 6-10 books in various forms moving through to publication in a year’s time—a 30-year career could be 300 books. Depending on how you want to approach/scale/juggle it, publishing is akin to the Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.”
I love the path that I’ve been lucky to follow, the books I’ve been able to read, the authors and booksellers I’ve met. It’s not a business driven by a mad rush for overnight profits. While maintaining profitability is an ever-rising task, it doesn’t have the wild swings of the stock market or the plunder of deep-sea divers. It’s a personable, thoughtful, even revelatory arc from word one to book on shelf.
TN: Today, artificial intelligence is impacting the publishing world. What is your point of view regarding this new additive to the mix?
RH: AI is the latest challenger to enter the publishing boxing ring. Technology, if we can invoke that word for Gutenberg’s printing press made in the 1400s, has always been a beguiling sparring partner as the up-and-comers battle the aging, reigning champion. What makes it impossible to project the looming impact is that all our guesses are based on the past, i.e., our experience. We’ve never experienced anything like this in the past. During my 40-plus years, I’ve seen a lot of change in publishing: word processing, voice-to-text, cover/page design available in off-the-shelf programs, email, ebooks, audiobooks. The only thing for certain is that it’s pointless to bash or denigrate AI’s potential. It’s going to make a significant change…it’ll become part of the process. Publishers, for all our idiosyncratic ways, learn quickly to adopt labor-saving methods.
A foundation for assessing the AI beast is this: “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck.” Good editors are smart. They can sense when reading something that it wasn’t crafted by a human.
AI has a weird overlap with that point of view, because from what I’ve learned, it can be applied just about anywhere in the chain. Sure, it could be tapped by an author or a copywriter, etc. But what we’re always looking for in our books is expert advice and a distinct authorial voice. That’s the opposite of what you’re going to get with AI, which is described as the process of scanning all available citations then mushing them all together, like an editorial word cloud. Readers embrace that singular, authoritative voice of insight and inspiration. At least at this moment, what AI gives is regurgitated output with a little bit of everything but nothing with distinction. As a final note, the asterisk is that AI will keep improving upon itself as the processing smooths out. But before we let that notion intimidate us, people in publishing also keep improving as they learn more and gain experience.
We can’t just wave off AI. That would be the failure of hubris. We have to wrestle with it daily to pin it down, eradicate it like kudzu before it overtakes everything. In time, perhaps we’ll find real value in it. Readers and publishers don’t want counterfeits. We all yearn for a genuine piece of writing that comes from one author’s heart and soul.
TN: As a large regional publisher, are you optimistic about printed books, their role in the world today and in the future?
RH: [I’ve had the opportunity] to see it all, from a New York City mass-market powerhouse that then grew by acquisition and sales to the largest publishing company in the world [Bertelsmann, which owns Penguin Random House domestically] to F&W Publications in Cincinnati, which was one of the smartest publishers I’ve ever seen by finding a core category for enthusiasts—be it writing, painting, crafts, graphic design, etc.—then encompassing that reader with magazines, books and book clubs.
At AdventureKEEN, we combine the best of those two publishing points of view. By thinking about outdoor enthusiasts where they live—birdwatchers, hikers, campers, foragers, kids, grown-ups, cyclists, naturalists, etc.—we offer guidebooks to explore and enjoy the region readers live in or will be traveling to. They trust us when doing a bucket-list trip to hike the Grand Canyon or paddle Carolina whitewater. It gives us great joy to hear from readers of 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: Cincinnati or Five-Star Trails: Louisville or Hiking the Red River Gorge that they never knew they had such wonderful places close to home. Birds by the backyard feeders. A guide to the stars in the night sky. And to do this for cities and citizens across the country—that’s what we love to do. Our catalog includes thousands of titles, and we do around 50 new, or new edition, titles every year—that’s a big challenge, and, maybe one day, AI might help us do it. We’ll see. But for now, we listen to our authors and their editors to design and deliver books that captivate readers with new adventures…right there in their state, city or neighborhood park.
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