Around Indies

Present Tense Celebrates Five Years of Business

Five years ago, Present Tense, a general bookstore in Batavia, New York, opened its doors. This Saturday, the store will hold an anniversary celebration, “Three cheers for five years!” They plan to serve refreshments and give away prizes to their customers.

Located between the cities of Buffalo and Rochester, Present Tense prides itself on its intimate, vintage atmosphere and its local service as a center for reading, writing, and the arts.

Owner Erica Caldwell told the Daily News that her biggest challenge as a bookseller has been picking out the books.

“There are so many books published every year, it’s very difficult to determine what will sell and what people will be looking for,” she said.

Caldwell said she is glad to have made it this far.

“It has been quite an education, but we’ve learned from our mistakes and we are having fun as we go, which is the important thing.”

Book Blogger Says, “Leave It to the Professionals”

Rebecca Joines Schinsky of The Booklady's Blog recently posted an account of her visits to various independent bookstores and the books she met along the way. Letting go of her ever-growing “to be read list,” she opened up to the idea of taking suggestions from others – namely, booksellers.

On her visit to Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, Georgia, Joines Schinsky found the staff “friendly and quick to offer assistance.” At their suggestions, she walked away from the store with age and interest-appropriate books for her nieces and nephew. (She purchased Ted Arnold's Fly Guy Meets Fly Girl!, Rebecca Stead's First Light, and Meg Cabot's Moving Day.)

“I was thrilled when the bookseller asked all the right questions,” she wrote.

Joines Schinsky picked up Skippy Dies by Paul Murray and The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell at Blue Elephant Book Shop. She praised the store's layout for being “conducive to the kind of wandering and browsing that best leads to discovering new books.”

She loved Left Bank Books in St. Louis, Missouri, and “was thrilled to spend some time in what is recognized as one of the country’s best independent bookstores.”

Returning to her hometown of Kansas City, Kansas, she visited the familiar Rainy Day Books, where she “put herself in the hands of an expert,” and it paid off. Bookseller Geoffrey Jennings recommended that she read The Perfect Scent by Chandler Burr and Down Around Midnight by Robert Sabbag.

“Sure, the folks at the big box bookstore might recognize you if you shop there often enough,” wrote Joines Schinsky, “but you can’t beat the service and relationships you’ll find with independent booksellers, especially when you’re willing to relinquish some of the control and trust them to guide you in the right direction.”