Bookstore Tour Guide's Bookstore Tourism Guide

by Raya Kuzyk, PW Daily for Booksellers -- Publishers Weekly, 11/23/2004

Independent bookstore enthusiast Larry Portzline of Harrisburg, Pa., has now organized and led seven visits of fellow bibliophiles to bookstores in New York City and Washington, D.C. His instruction book on the subject, the $10 print-on-demand paperback Bookstore Tourism: The Book Addict's Guide to Planning and Promoting Bookstore Road Trips for Bibliophiles and Other Bookshop Junkies (Bookshop Junkie Press, Oct.), has just been released. And his next bus tour is scheduled for March 19 to Greenwich Village in New York City.

Speaking with PW Daily last week, Portzline said his are hands full managing his Web site, which attracts roughly 1,500 unique users per month. Some 3,000 complimentary copies of the book have already been downloaded. He's sold 500 copies of the paperback.

He also seems to have caught the publishing bug. "I'd like to contract with a publisher to do an expanded version of [Bookstore Tourism], and I'd also like to pitch a series of regional and city guides to 'Great Bookstore Towns' under the Bookstore Tourism brand name," he said. "I'd also like to do a coffee table book on famous and infamous bookstores, past and present, with text by the authors who've frequented them."

Portzline, a part-time teacher at Harrisburg Area Community College and full-time Pennsylvania Senate writer, began organizing bookstore tours in early 2003. "I heard about these restaurant trips a colleague at the college leads to New York City, and I suggested a bookstore trip to Greenwich Village," he said of what led him to the idea of packing 50 people into a rented motorcoach on an independent bookstore-exploring romp. "I decided to encourage other people around the country to do it as a way to promote and support independent bookstores, to create a new travel niche for booklovers and to promote reading and literacy." He estimates each busload of tourers returns from such trips with 200 books.