Bookselling News: Upgrades Good and Bad

by John Mutter, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 3/22/2005

The Washington Times offers an intro course to university online textbook exchanges, several of which are sponsored by student governments. In what might be a case of overconfidence, a Follett spokesperson told the Times, "This is really nothing new. Students have always exchanged. They're just doing it electronically now."

Two competing second-generation used book booksellers in The Villages, Fla., between Orlando and Ocala, told the Daily Sun that in the used book world at least, the more booksellers the merrier.

Among interesting tidbits from the paper's story:

• Customers at Raintree Books are "avid readers" who often buy "grocery bags of books," owner Jo Henson said.
• Tracey Brooks, owner of All Booked Up, opened her store after a local survey three years ago indicated that a used bookstore was the type of business most wanted by residents.

Oops. The first tangible evidence of a new owner's promise to upgrade the Vallejo Plaza Shopping Center in Vallejo, Calif., has been to raise the rent on lease renewals, according to the Times-Herald. The rent hike has led Annie's Book Stop, which specializes in used paperbacks, to decide to move out at the end of the month.

In another mall story, the owner of the Lehigh Valley Mall in Whitehall Township, Pa., is proposing adding "a lifestyle center," in front of the main entrance to the mall, nj.com reported.

The biggest change since the mall's 1976 opening, the new section would have a "town-center atmosphere" with five freestanding buildings and include such businesses as a "large bookstore."

This sounds suspiciously like trying to recreate a downtown.

In the six months since Sheila and Rick Wise bought Alternative Books in Upper Kingston, N.Y., the couple have made many changes, including adding children's books (but no Disney or TV show-related titles!) and new books, expanding the magazine offerings, displaying work by local artists, screening movies and adding sitting areas.

Read all about it in the Daily Freeman.