PANAT TARANATSoftware Engineer & Bookstore Owner
Watercolor portrait of Panat Taranat

About

I'm a software engineer based in Jersey City. In 2024 I opened Dungeon Books, a sci-fi and fantasy bookstore.

Dungeon Books

Carrie and I met across a D&D table. A few sessions in, we were sketching what eventually became Dungeon Books, a sci-fi and fantasy bookstore we opened in Jersey City in 2024. Carrie was a software engineer, then an actor, then sold books. I was a software engineer with a collection of sci-fi and fantasy paperback books that had been slowly taking over my apartment.

The idea came from Appendix N in the original AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, the reading list that inspired the people who wrote the game. The store is built around that premise: the same shelf can feed the novel you read at home and the campaign you run on Saturday. We wanted it to feel more like a friend's living room than a retail space, where someone could walk in for one book and leave with one they weren't looking for. I call it foraging for ideas.

Shelves of sci-fi and fantasy novels and RPG books inside Dungeon Books
Inside the shop.

We run it a little differently than most indie shops. The business side gets treated like a small product: we look at what's going well, experiment, and be honest with ourselves when something isn't working out. Year one came in at 29% growth without loans or outside investors, which feels surreal to type. The part I'm prouder of, though, is that every book on our shelves was picked by a person who reads them.

Weekly D&D sessions in the back of the store are non-negotiable. A lot of our regulars met each other across a table of dice.

Outside the shop, I teach AI and technology workshops at the Jersey City Free Public Library and give presentations on technology and tabletop games at Liberty Science Center. Most of what I earn goes back into the store and the programs we run around it.

Press: IndieBound, Jersey City Times, Shelf Awareness.

Panat and Carrie holding a giant d20 in front of the Dungeon Books storefront
Panat and Carrie out front. Dungeon Books, Jersey City, opened 2024.

Colophon

colophon n. a note at the back of a book saying how it was made.

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