Choices Schmoices: Manhattan Book Store Sells Only One Book

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A literary surprise.

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In a sly bid for publicity, Andrew Kessler opened a book shop in New York’s West Village, where on every shelf you will find only books by… Andrew Kessler. 

The work is called Martian Summer: Robot Arms, Cowboy Spacemen, and My 90 Days With the Phoenix Mars Mission and is his account of being inside mission control with gaggles of scientists and engineers. (It will cost you $27.95 to own.) The name of his store is much more concise: Ed’s Martian Book. And his self-appropriated job title is downright elegant in its simplicity: Kessler calls himself the Monobookist (though in reality, you’ll be unsurprised to hear, he is a creative director at an advertising agency).

(More on TIME.com: See the 100 best novels of all-TIME)

There is, so far, one review on Yelp from a Ned S. in Manhattan, and he gave it four out of five stars:

The design is beautiful, the staff is appropriately cagey and the book itself is quite good. I have but one quibble. When the gentleman at the counter asked me to sign the guestbook, there was more than a small pang of disappointment. I also spotted a “mac book” on the back counter. What part of MONObookism don’t you understand!!! Admittedly, I am a purist.

Ned wasn’t the only one nonplussed. After “a number of inquiries,” Kessler posted a sign outside: “We have one book, but we’re not Scientologists.” (via New York Times)