About Bookstores

Harlem USA, the 275,000-square-foot entertainment and retail mall on 125th Street in Manhattan -- the center of one of the nation's largest African-American communities -- will soon have an independent bookstore. According to store co-owner Rita Ewing, a writer and attorney, the Hue-Man Bookstore opens for business on July 29, with a grand opening celebration scheduled for August 1.

At first glance, the recent feature article in the Los Angeles Times about Santa Monica's well-known Midnight Special Bookstore seemed to be telling an all-too-familiar tale: independent bookshop forced out of long-time location by rising rents. Future prospects: bleak to none.

Scott's Bookstore is the only general bookstore in Mount Vernon, Washington, a city with a population of over 60,000. Nonetheless, the 5,000-square-foot store, which occupies the historic 95-year-old Granary Building, enjoys a special camaraderie with its independent bookstore colleagues, said Megan Scott, manager of Scott's Bookstore.

Dateline: Wednesday, June 26. It was a dark and stormy night in landlocked Fort Wayne, Indiana. The staff of the 10,000-square-foot Million Story Book Company was closing up at 9:00 p.m. when the storm sewers serving the bookstore and other businesses in the Covington Plaza strip shopping center reached their capacity and "geysered up," according to store co-owner, co-founder, and marketing manager Dave Kaverman.

Two independent bookstores in the Detroit, Michigan, area were recently treated to a visit from the 2002 Newbery Medal winner, children's author Linda Sue Park. Dressed in a traditional Korean gown, Park talked about her writing, answered questions, and autographed copies of her books at Halfway Down the Stairs Children's Book Shop in Rochester, on Friday, June 28, and the next day at Book Beat in Oak Park. Park won the Newbery, which is awarded annually by the American Library Association, for her novel A Single Shard.

For both Pat Willoughby and Petra Williams, the prospect of running an independent bookstore represented a radical change from their careers in corporate America. Willoughby, in sales and marketing for the last 20 years, is the owner of the Burke’s Books of Park Ridge in Park Ridge, Illinois, set to open in late July. Williams, the co-owner, along with her husband Daniel, of All About Books in Smithville, Missouri, just outside of Kansas City, was an engineer. All About Books will open in mid-July.

Call for Bookstore Photos for the Fall 2002 New Yorker Book Sense Insert Book Sense is working with The New Yorker on its September 30 Book Sense insert to feature as many independent bookstores with Book Sense as possible. All Book Sense stores are encouraged to send photographs of their stores -- exterior and interior shots as well as photos of in-store, window, or point-of-purchase Book Sense displays.

Linda Ramsdell, owner of the Galaxy Bookshop in Hardwick, Vermont, is hanging up her bookseller’s hat for a few days and donning both author escort and limo driver’s caps to add a new dimension to New England handselling. The author Ramsdell will escort, from June 30 to July 3, is Michael Crummey (Book Sense 76 Pick River Thieves, Houghton Mifflin), and the limo is her Subaru Impreza.

On June 28, a new and improved Sarasota News & Books in Sarasota, Florida, will reopen after a disastrous plumbing accident on March 27 left the store with extensive structural damage and a complete loss of usable inventory. (For the full story about the flood, click here.)