WORD Up

Christine Onorati had to move from Northport, Long Island (population fewer than 8,000) to Brooklyn, New York (population more than two million) to get that small-town feeling.

Onorati, who opened WORD in the Greenpoint neighborhood in March, told BTW, "I've been getting the warmest welcome. People come in everyday to tell me how happy we're here. Everyone knows each other. It's really tightly knit. It's funny I had to come to Brooklyn to get such a small-town feeling."

Onorati, who majored in English with a concentration in publishing in college, had worked in bookstores and publishing before and after graduation. She opened The Dog-Eared Bookshop, with a fifty-fifty inventory of new and used books, in Northport and ran it for five-and-a-half years. After she and her husband moved to Brooklyn, Onorati commuted to Long Island to run the store, while looking for a location for WORD in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood.

"I never found a space I loved," she said. "I was having brunch in my own neighborhood, and I thought why not open the store right where we live? The first space I looked at I fell in love with, and things just fell into place after that." Onorati closed The Dog-Eared Bookshop in January and opened WORD in March.

Living and working in Greenpoint has turned out well for the bookseller, who has a 10-minute walk, and even shorter bike ride, to the store. "Greenpoint has had a huge resurgence," she said. "In 2005 it was rezoned residential, and our whole street has had a makeover. The historic street has been repaved. It has granite curbs and old-fashioned streetlamps. New stores crop up all the time."

Another bonus of living in Brooklyn is that this year, during BookExpo America, ABA's education sessions, opening events, and receptions are being held right in Onorati's new stomping grounds. She'll be in attendance for ABA's Day of Education on Thursday and has signed up for ABA's Brooklyn Bridge literary walking tour on Wednesday.

WORD's approximately 900-square-foot space had been empty for 40 years. The landlords bought the landmark building three years ago and renovated the building in full compliance with the landmark committee -- all to the aesthetic benefit of the bookstore. The huge storefront windows are as they were when the building was built in the mid 19th century. "I love it," said Onorati. "There's exposed brick inside, and I finished the floors and did the painting." The store has an entire lower level that, once finished, will become a dedicated events space.

The building, on Franklin Street, is one of the oldest in Greenpoint, and it's rumored that Abe Lincoln might have been a houseguest during his presidency, when he came to the area to christen a ship. "The landlord said there's a record of Lincoln staying on Franklin," said Onorati. "There are only two places he could have slept, and this building is one of them."

Onorati said her new neighbors have similar reading tastes to her own and are "reacting really well" to her inventory of about 6,000 titles. "People come in and tell me I have a great collection. One person couldn't believe all of the graphic novels we carry." Some of WORD's top-selling graphic novels are Craig Thompson's Blankets (Top Shelf Productions) and Good-bye, Chunky Rice (Pantheon).

About half the inventory is children's titles, with the other half divided among literary fiction and nonfiction, travel, and more. "I like strange, interesting books," Onorati told BTW. "We sell a lot of Murakami." One of Onorati's favorites was written by one of Brooklyn's own -- Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Mariner). WORD stocks mostly trade paperbacks with select hardcovers, including Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union (HarperCollins) and Dave Egger's What Is the What (McSweeney's).

WORD features Book Sense Picks titles, along with the fliers, on a table surrounded by chairs at the front of the store.

Onorati rents a corner of the store to Modern Planet T-shirts, a business run by her friend, Danielle McGurran. The funky T-shirts feature graphics of a bicycle, a typewriter, a reel-to-reel machine, and headphones. "It gives me a little extra cash," said Onorati. "I don't like going too far off of books, but it's a nice extra item. People really love them."

Onorati has been chronicling the developments and happenings at WORD on her blog. "It's just one more way for me to connect with customers," she explained. "For the store to succeed it needs a lot of community support. That was the biggest problem at the old store. People liked the idea of having a bookstore, but didn't shop there enough."

Onorati doesn't think she'll have that predicament in Greenpoint. "One man came in and literally kissed the ground. I thought, 'Wow. That's some welcome,'" she told BTW. "He said he told his wife how excited he was to have a bookstore in the neighborhood, and she said he needs to do more than be excited, he has to support it. Now he comes in and buys a book every week." --Karen Schechner