Jersey Bookseller Plans Happy 75th Anniversary

Anne Laird, the sixth owner of The Town Book Store in Westfield, New Jersey, will be hosting a month-long celebration featuring raffles, giveaways, and author signings, this November to mark the store's 75th anniversary and to thank the community for its continuing support. Laird bought the bookstore in 2007 to save it. "I feel fortunate I was able to keep it alive," she said. "It's something I didn't think would be a real possibility."

It was just a couple of years ago that Grace Roth, Town Book Store's then owner and Anne Laird's employer, announced that she would be selling or closing the business due to an impending rent hike. The announcement left Laird wondering how she would find another job that she would love as much. "I guess I needed the obvious pointed out, because I'd never considered buying it until my husband suggested it," Laird told BTW.

The key was finding an ideal space for her new business. Laird found the right location across the street, with the same square footage (about 1,300) and an accommodating landlord -- her neighbor Felice Cohen. So, after 72 years in the same space, Town Book Store moved across East Broad Street. During the moving process Laird discovered the store's original ledgers. "It was really cool to see the prices back then, the publishers' different names," she added. "Harper was Harper & Row. It's just fun to have this piece of history."

The new space also comes with a bit of book-related history. The bookstore shares a wall with the town's former library, donated to Westfield by Andrew Carnegie in 1906. "You can see the lintels have different authors names chiseled into them," said Laird.

The Town Book Store stocks about 7,000 titles and focuses on fiction. "We're a very small store, and when we moved we really streamlined," she said. "We had accumulated a lot over the years. Now we stock a lot of fiction, mainly paperback, and we have a lot of children's books." On weekends, the bookstore often hosts several events with local authors.

The business has been able to weather the recession, said Laird, thanks to the town of Westfield, where Laird grew up and where she has raised her own family. "People seem to be embracing the idea of shopping locally and having a hand in the success of local businesses. I can't tell you the number of people who said they had been planning to go to Barnes & Noble, but they decided not to when they saw our sign, which says, 'Nurture Your Community: Shop Local.'"

There are many big box stores nearby, several within a couple miles radius, but Laird noted, "The fact that we're surviving with so much competition speaks not only to us and what we're providing, but to the town itself and the people who live here."

After almost three years of running Town Books, with the help of Roth one day a week, Laird said that she is more seasoned and understands her customer base better, and the store is enjoying a modest profit. "Right now," she concluded, "everything we're doing seems to be working." --Karen Schechner