Planning for Post-Holidays? Check Out the 'Bookstore Road Trip' Video

Booksellers looking for innovative ways to promote their stores and bolster post-holiday sales should check out the video "Bookstore Road Trip" on the website of the nonprofit National Council of Bookstore Tourism, www.bookstoretourism.com. Two 2006 tours, one from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to bookstores in New York City, and the other a Beach Towns Bookstore Tour, sponsored by the Southern California Booksellers Association, are featured with three viewing options.

"What we managed to capture in these conversations in 'Bookstore Road Trip' is the excitement of the bibliophiles who came along for the ride and the enthusiasm that booksellers have for the idea," said Larry Portzline, founder of the National Council on Bookstore Tourism and author of Bookstore Tourism: The Book Addict's Guide to Planning & Promoting Bookstore Road Trips for Bibliophiles & Other Bookshop Junkies (Bookshop Junkie Press). "In keeping with the grassroots nature of the bookstore tourism concept, the video is a 'DIY' [do it yourself] endeavor, shot by a friend and me and edited by yours truly on my home computer."

Since Portzline launched the concept of Bookstore Tourism in 2003, tours have been conducted in locations across the country, and booksellers have reported significant benefits for both sponsoring and destination stores.

The 15-minute "Bookstore Road Trip" video, complete with soundtrack, gives equal time to New York and California. The Greenwich Village segment includes stops at McNally Robinson Booksellers and Three Lives & Company. At Three Lives, bookseller Carol Wald says of bookstore tourism, "I love it. Anybody that signs up to go on a book tour is probably a book lover, so we've got a ready made group coming in that's going to appreciate a store like this."

The Southern California trip stops at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena and other bookstores, and includes footage of a reading given by Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, a.k.a. "Gidget" (Gidget, Frederick Kohner and Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, Berkley) at Diesel, A Bookstore in Malibu. Between the bookstore stops are interviews with bookstore tourists, including one who was on her third tour.

The current version of "Bookstore Road Trip," available on the Bookstore Tourism website, www.bookstoretourism.com, is not broadcast quality, but Portzline will soon make available higher quality copies on DVD.

Portzline is currently working on a white paper that will present evidence in support of Bookstore Tourism's viability and value (for example, how it raises consumer awareness of independent bookstores; how it can help to promote reading and literacy; how it fits into the phenomenal growth of niche travel and cultural tourism; and how it can serve as an economic development tool and as a means to promote "local first" efforts).

The white paper will also serve as the foundation of the business plan of the National Council on Bookstore Tourism, which will officially launch in early 2007. The council will partner with booksellers, publishers, libraries, schools, reading groups, the travel industry, tourism bureaus, economic development agencies, and other organizations -- at the national, regional, state and local levels -- to promote independent bookstores as a group travel destination.

More information about bookstore tourism is available at Portzline's website, www.bookstoretourism.com. --Karen Schechner