About Bookstores

Nine years ago, Karen Gaston, then co-owner of Butterfly Books in De Pere, Wisconsin, asked her friend Barbara Wilson to help out at her children's bookstore for a few hours during the holiday season. Wilson enjoyed it so much she stayed on as a part-time staff member, and, last January, she bought the place. "This is the job I've always wanted," said Wilson. "I've always been interested in children's literature."

Quail Ridge Books -- winner of numerous national and local awards -- has won again.

The Raleigh, North Carolina, store won the April 1865: The Month That Saved America Book Sense display contest. The prize, a four-day, three-night trip to history-rich Charleston, South Carolina, was awarded to the creator of the display, Virginia Culp.

At Maria's Bookshop in Durango, Colorado, owners Peter Schertz and Andrea Avantaggio are speaking out about keeping secrets. The secrets are the purchases made by customers, and the books and Web sites used by library patrons. They do not believe any of that information should be released to government agents without explanation. However, under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, passed in the wake of 9/11, federal investigators can demand that information of booksellers and library personnel, who are then forbidden to inform patrons of the disclosure.

On Monday, June 23, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) joined Arkansas' That Bookstore in Blytheville and others in challenging the constitutionality of new amendments to an Arkansas statute. The law, due to go into effect on June 26, would require retailers -- at the risk of jail or fines -- to segregate any work that is "harmful to minors" in an "adults only" section of the store. The groups filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Little Rock.

In late October, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories conducted a two-week observational study on the buying behavior of patrons at a large independent bookstore, Kepler's Books & Magazines in Menlo Park, California. The results of the study were informative, and, in some cases, surprising, noted Kepler's Clark Kepler. "It was interesting to see the store through a third party's eyes," he said.

Often booksellers are called to do more than sell books. They sometimes have to protect them, as well as the rights of readers. One independent bookseller that has historically been a stalwart protector of freedom of expression is San Francisco's inimitable City Lights Bookstore, which is celebrating its golden anniversary this month.

On June 18, Oprah Winfrey announced the first selection for her revived Oprah's Book Club. The book, which had previously been identified by only an ordering ISBN, is East of Eden by John Steinbeck. In the Oprah audience were 10 staff members of Anderson's Bookshop in Naperville, Illinois. They were able to hear Winfrey declare Anderson's "the best independent bookstore in the country" and to see her air a video clip taped in the store.

By Laura Hansen

Here, Laura Hansen, owner/manager of Bookin' It in Little Falls, Minnesota, shares her recent presentation to a local business group about the benefits to her store from working cooperatively with other booksellers to get the word out about their businesses and the availability of Book Sense gift certificates.

Two years ago, inspired by the Book Sense 76, the owners of Inkwood Books in Tampa, Florida, put all of the month's 76 titles on sale during the week of July 4 to celebrate the Independence Day holiday and to bring attention to their store as an independent business.

Henry Berliner, owner of The Foundry Bookstore in Connecticut, summarized one of the primary struggles for independent bookstores in a sentence: "Independents used to have 30 percent of book sales and the chains had 15; now the chains have the 30 percent." The intensification of competition and his wish to retire prompted Berliner to decide to close the 29-year-old bookstore, where he started out as a clerk a year after the store opened. The Foundry will close its doors on June 30.

Now that the June 21 release date of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is just days away, booksellers are making their last preparations for the industry's equivalent of grabbing a chamber full of golden snitches. Here's our final report on booksellers' plans to celebrate J.K. Rowling's latest, including story-writing contests, owl adoptions, goblets of butterbeer, and a midnight bazaar.

The Dayton Board of Education's purchase of an office building in downtown Dayton will cause the permanent closing of Wilkie's Bookstore and Café, Ohio's oldest independent bookstore. Wilkie's occupies 3,800 square feet in the corner of the building owned by Reynold & Reynolds. According to press accounts in the Dayton Daily News, school officials want to use that space as a public meeting room when they consolidate the Board's offices there in a $15.5 million transaction.

Book Sense Book of the Year Awards Announced at ABA Celebration of Bookselling