Around Indies

Kepler’s Marks 60 Years

On September 19, Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, California, will celebrate its 60th anniversary with a block party featuring live music, cake, games, face painting, book making, and a photo booth.

Under the guidance of CEO Praveen Madan, who took over the store in 2012, the bookstore has been profitable for two years running, reported the San Jose Mercury News. Madan, who is also co-owner of The Booksmith in San Francisco with his wife, Christin Evans, made significant changes to the store over the years, including reducing the store’s footprint, increasing its inventory, securing a lower rent, and creating the nonprofit Peninsula Arts & Letters to manage its events and community partnerships. Madan also raised employee wages from $9 per hour to $13 and initiated a profit-sharing program, with hopes of further growing salaries.

“The store basically became too big to be sustainable for the level of book sales there was,” Madan told the newspaper. “We’ve taken the money we’ve been saving from paying less rent and we invested it back into better stock, better fixtures, better layout, better systems.”

Madan has strived to keep the bookstore as community-focused as founder Roy Kaplan set out to do when he opened the store in 1955. “He was really just a very involved community activist and he started the store really as a manifestation of his activism, as a way to bring people together to talk about issues and have intellectual dialogue and conversations,” Madan said. “A number of our programs are not run to sell books, it’s really run for the cultural enrichment of the community.”

Valley Bookseller Celebrates 25th Anniversary

Valley Bookseller owner Molly Rice and manager Kathleen Eddy

Valley Bookseller in Stillwater, Minnesota, marked 25 years in business on September 12 with a party and open house at the nearby Lowell Inn, reported the Stillwater Gazette. The free celebration featured more than 40 local and regional authors, plus appetizers and champagne.

“It’s quite an accomplishment for an indie bookstore these days,” store manager Kathleen Eddy told the Gazette, calling Valley Bookseller “an important literary spot in the community.”

Owner Mary Rice purchased the store in 2008 and it now has a full events program, including the popular Storytime Trolley and Totally Criminal Cocktail Hour, plus many partnerships with local businesses, organizations, and schools.

“We can’t compete price-wise with Amazon, but we more than make up for it in customer service,” Eddy said. “In a small town like this, we recognize almost all of our customers.”

Hennessey + Ingalls to Relocate

Art and architecture bookstore Hennessey + Ingalls is moving from its longtime Santa Monica home, where it has been for 52 years, to downtown Los Angeles’ arts district, reported the Santa Monica Lookout.

Due to online competitors, “We had 50, 60 percent less business,” said Brett Hennessey, son of owner Mark Hennessey. “That kind of downturn doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for us, but that we had to restructure and reshape.”

The bookstore will close in February and reopen in the same month in its new digs, a 5,000-square-foot space in a mixed-use complex that is located across from the Southern California Institute of Architecture.

The complex includes upscale restaurants, clothing boutiques, an organic grocery store, and a café, all of which Hennessey said will attract more arts-oriented customers. “It’s a younger, hipper crowd,” he said. “It’s this little bubble of like-minded people.”