Great Staff, Award-Winning Displays Make Bookstore a Sylvan Institution

The City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, North Carolina, takes its name from the same source as San Francisco's City Lights -- the eponymous Charlie Chaplin movie. But instead of a city of 800,000 on the bay, Sylva's City Lights is in a rural town of 2,500 between the Great Smokies and the Balsams, two mountain ranges in the highest part of the southern Appalachians. And rather than beat poetry, owner Joyce Moore made the store's specialty the literature of the Appalachian region.

Eighteen years ago, Moore was working at West Carolina University as an information specialist when City Lights came up for sale. It had been open for a year and a half when then owner, author Gary Carden, was planning to close owing to health issues. When Moore found out she was the beneficiary of a small inheritance, she decided to save the local bookstore.

"It was unexpected," she said of the inheritance. "And it was the exact amount Gary was asking for the store. It seemed fortuitous. I signed the check over to him, and it was like I never had it. It wasn't such a large amount that the world would end if I lost it."

Moore had no prior bookselling experience, though she did have a graduate degree in library science, so she enrolled in an ABA Booksellers School, where That Bookstore In Blytheville's Mary Gay Shipley was an instructor. Years later, Moore continues to occasionally seek advice from Shipley. Emoke B'Racz of Malaprops, about 50 miles away, also offered her guidance in the beginning.

In 1993, City Lights moved up the street and just about tripled its size to over 3,000 square feet. The relocation took the form of a parade, with a pipe-and-drum band and many friends and spectators, up Main Street to a former office building on the corner of Spring and Jackson streets. In the new location, Moore opened the Spring Street Cafe, which is now leased and operated by a former City Lights employee.

City Lights staff (l. to r.) Chris Wilcox, Margot Wilcox, Joyce Moore, Tom Robbins, Jessica Philyaw, Jenifer Ross, Allen Moore, and Gabe Wood (front).

The store joined Book Sense when the program began in '99 and also signed up for BookSense.com when that became available. Moore mentioned it's been particularly helpful for compiling large orders. The site, citylights.booksense.com, welcomes customers to City Lights' "Web Store," and says, "It's the 21st century, so while we're partial to the delights of our 'brick and mortar' store front, we do also offer a full-service Web store.... [Where] you can still experience the same excellent attention to your book needs and the same resources and knowledge that our community has come to expect from City Lights Bookstore."

Capitalizing on another Book Sense marketing tool, Moore enrolled in the gift card program prior to last holiday season. "People like the gift cards a lot," she said. "They use them for rewards. They're convenient and easier for people to use." For their Book Sense displays, City Lights uses an antique stove at the front of the store as the centerpiece.

As part of its reading series, City Lights recently hosted Tom Robbins, a visit that the store won in a Random House display contest for Robbins' latest novel, Villa Incognito. In April '04, a flabbergasted Moore received a phone call to schedule the reading before she knew she'd won the contest, which ended in May '03. For the event, City Lights closed off the street to create an enormous block party for Sylva's hundreds of Tom Robbins fans. Robbins read from a balcony and afterwards signed books until nearly midnight. "Everyone loved him," said Moore. Robbins even promised to return for his next book.

For the signing, Moore used a numbered ticket system so customers could shop or go have dinner instead of waiting four hours to get their book signed by Robbins, a system that recently worked well for Bill Clinton's signing at Hue-Man Bookstore in New York City. Moore said she consulted with mentor Mary Gay Shipley who told her about the system and reported using it successfully when That Bookstore in Blytheville hosted Hillary Clinton and John Grisham.

Launched almost 20 years ago with an unexpected windfall, City Lights has grown into a long-standing Sylvan institution. Moore credits her staff with the store's staying power. "I have some of the best people working here at the store," she said. Moore also mentioned that not only did staff members, including Chris Wilcox, Jessica Philyaw, and Jenifer Ross, create the winning Tom Robbins display and organize a stellar reading, they also created a Lemony Snicket display, complete with leeches, that came in second place in another contest. Moore said, "I wouldn't be having this whole experience if not for the employees. They need to be recognized." --Karen Schechner