Around Indies

Red Balloon Under New Ownership

On August 1, The Red Balloon Bookshop, a 27-year-old children’s bookstore in St. Paul, Minnesota, is changing hands.

Founder Carole Erdahl and business partner Michele Cromer-Poire told the St. Paul Star Tribune that they have decided to retire, and will be selling the store to Holly Weinkauf and Amy Sullivan.

Red Balloon has remained in the same location on Grand Avenue since it opened, and has expanded once. It continues to be a niche store, catering exclusively to children. Six years ago, the store began selling books in HMS Host’s concession store at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Q&A With New Owners of Politics & Prose

A Q&A with Bradley Graham and Lissa Muscatine, the new owners of Politics & Prose, Washington D.C.’s landmark store, was recently featured in the Washingtonian.

Graham and Muscatine, who have had successful careers in politics and journalism, purchased the store at the end of March.

In the piece, Muscatine explained the “stark” differences between a bookstore experience and online shopping:

“An independent operation like Politics and Prose is more than a bookstore. It’s a forum, a gathering spot, and a public space where ideas are exchanged. Our staff of buyers and booksellers rightly view themselves as curators of the books we sell. They’ve read the books themselves; some of them know the authors personally. They have expertise to offer to customers and a level of personal interaction that you just can’t get on Amazon.com or in a large chain store. In addition, we have over 500 author events a year that are a free service for our community. So P&P has become a venue for the kind of civic discourse that simply doesn’t exist in the same way on-line.”