Booksellers Take to the Road for a Bookstore Tour

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If booksellers had a free day away from their stores and the opportunity to be driven around in a bus with a group of like-minded colleagues, how would they most likely spend the day?

Visiting other bookstores, of course.

That was the guiding premise behind the Southern California Booksellers Association's (SCBA) first Independent Bookstore Tour, a May 10 event in Los Angeles, which drew over 40 participants from around the Southland.

Booksellers (and some other book industry professionals) gathered at 8:30 a.m. in the back plaza of the main Vroman's store in Pasadena for the start of an eclectic, nine-hour tour of eight stores situated all over L.A.

First on the itinerary was the 15-year-old Book'em Mysteries in South Pasadena -- a small, cozy (also hard-boiled) store where co-owner Barry Martin filled the wide-awake pilgrims in on the store's retail realities. "The best teachers we've had have been our customers," he said. "If you listen to them, they're going to tell you what your bookstore is.... Many of them, we consider our friends."

Book'em patrons are upper-middle-class, Martin said. "They live within a 10- to 12-mile radius [of us]. They are ethnically diverse. They are college-educated, and they're reading sophisticates.... If you want to know our demographic, it's about 35 to death."

The tour bus then drove some 15 freeway-miles south to 17-year-old EsoWon Books, a general store where the focus is on African-American fiction and nonfiction. Owner James Fugate explained to his visitors how EsoWon began with the idea of being a community bookstore. "We started having, sort of, community forums, on Friday nights, where people could meet, discuss issues, discuss books," he said. "We weren't able to get any book signings at that time ... and we decided we would start bringing in authors ourselves.... Even though we may have charged maybe five or 10 dollars admission, we [usually] broke even with the airfare. It brought a lot of community attention to the store.... Slowly, people began to take notice of us."

Then, one day EsoWon got a call from someone wanting to present Muhammad Ali at the store, Fugate recalled. "It was incredible: a Sunday afternoon, Muhammad came at 10:00 o'clock ... stayed until 6:00, made sure everybody got their books signed. So the store slowly evolved."

Last year, EsoWon was chosen to be one of two L.A. stores to host signings for Bill Clinton's memoir, My Life. "I didn't expect 10,000 people, all thinking somehow they were going to be among the 1,500 who'd get in to buy a book," Fugate said, noting that it was quite a sight.

Next, the tour-takers were driven 14 miles west, to the oceanside town of Pacific Palisades, once home to Thomas Mann and other emigre authors of the 1940s. There were, in fact, Mann titles on the shelves of the small but well-stocked and wonderfully appointed Village Books, where store owner Katie O'Laughlin described how wheeled shelves and tables are rolled into the back of the store for author visits. "We have folding-chairs and benches to seat about 30 people," she explained. "It's a way to make a small space workable."

Village Books has its events mostly in the evening near its closing time of 8:00 p.m. "We've had a lot of success with local authors, and part of it is that in this neighborhood we have a lot of authors and friends of authors," O'Laughlin said. "I don't think I've ever had to actually go out and look for people; we've always had people coming in here. The local people will invite their families and friends, their neighbors (to their signings). Sometimes they bring food, and they really get people in here." It's not uncommon for a "neighborhood" author to sell 50 to 100 books, she said, whereas bigger-name writers who have had events at the store have only sold 20 or 30. "So I find it's worth the time and effort, for your local people."

Many tour participants took notes during these informal presentations. Back on the bus, several were heard talking about helpful things they'd learned: how Book'em found postcards preferable to newsletters for letting patrons know about upcoming events; how EsoWon went about hiring off-duty police officers for on-site event security.

By the time the bus arrived at Dutton's Beverly Hills, riders were ready and grateful for the sandwich lunch waiting in the gleaming new store. They munched on pita-wraps and swigged sodas as Random House rep Margaret Winter and HarperCollins' Gabe Barillas filled them in on current and upcoming titles and trends.

Writer Kathleen Duey, a tour participant and author of several previous young-adult titles, spoke about her recent work with Big Guy Books and its Time Soldiers series, which features pictographically strong "flash-bam" adventure tales aimed at male youths. "What we're trying to do is build a bridge to the video-boys, from what they do all day, back to books," said Duey. "That's the point. In fact, we even trademarked the phrase 'stealth literacy' ... There's a place for these. What we would love to be is the comic-books for the next generation, because there are so many boys who are so visual."

More youth titles were showcased for the tour group at Children's Book World, three miles southwest of Beverly Hills, near Century City. In this high-ceilinged, welcoming store, HarperCollins children's books rep Deborah Murphy spoke of such buzz-worthy titles as Michelle Paver's current hit Wolf Brother, the 100-plus Narnia Chronicles-related HarperCollins titles tied to the December movie version of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe; and Lemony Snicket's 12th book (its title to be kept secret until its release), due October 18.

At Children's Book World, patrons were plentiful; the staff seemed as knowledgeable and as eager to help as librarians; and several tour-members (here as in other stores visited) purchased books.

"This city is so spread-out," said Skylight Books general manager Kerry Slattery, a tour participant, "and everyone's so busy, that a tour like this is almost the only way to see and find out about all the different stores around." Slattery asked pertinent questions about store logistics and practices of several of the presenting booksellers, as did other tour-takers. "There are always new things you can learn," she said.

In fact, Slattery's own eight-year-old Skylight Books, 16 miles away, was the sixth store the tour visited.

At Skylight, Los Angeles senior public librarian Pearl Yonezawa spoke of ways in which her Los Feliz branch library worked with Slattery's store as community partners on various events and in book-donation programs. The tour group also learned how Skylight arranged an ongoing program in which store patrons buy books to be given to nearby Children's Hospital.

The daylight-savings-time sun was still high in the L.A. sky as the tour bus pulled into the parking lot of Museum of the American West Autry National Center in Griffith Park at about 5:00 p.m., but the energy of the tour participants seemed to be sinking a bit as they were led into the museum's bookstore and gift shop -- the daylong tour's penultimate stop. After inspecting the small shop's impressively large selection of books and Western-related items, the group's members listened closely to the Autry's director of retail operations Bobbi Jean Bell's brief talk and then asked several good questions.

But by the time the tour made its way back to, inside, and upstairs at Vroman's in Pasadena, even the most persistent questioners were content now just to graze from a fruit-and-cheese buffet and listen as SCBA president Terry Gilman said she thought there was a real future for this bookstore-tour event -- not only for booksellers, but for consumers.

"I think it went really well," agreed SCBA executive director Jennifer Bigelow. "I'm very happy.... The results from our (recent) survey showed the stores very much wanted the opportunity to network with one another, to learn from another and see each other's stores, and that's what they did today.... Once Upon a Story, in Long Beach -- Julee Morris closed her store, put up a sign saying 'gone to look at bookstores,' and brought her staff with her for the day so they could see how others do business." Bigelow anticipated the tour becoming an annual SCBA event. --Tom Nolan