Bookselling News: All Points of the Compass

by John Mutter, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 3/25/2005

The Word Shop bookstore in Santa Cruz, Calif., a Christian bookselling island in a New Age sea, is distinguished by an owner with a great sense of humor and a sometimes skeptical view of her subject, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported.

For example, store owner Alliee DeArmond puts end-of-time literature on a shelf called "millennial panic." She commented: "I just don't believe God is only going to save middle class, church-going arty ladies. What kind of God would He be if He didn't save the rednecks and the snobby intellectuals too?"

DeArmond also pairs books with identical titles but different viewpoints, such as the two Who Speaks for God? books, one by former Nixon White House staffer Chuck Colson, the other by the more left-of-center Jim Wallis.

An attempt by the student government at Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, Ky., to make textbook lists available to all students--which would allow them more options and possible savings--has hit a snag that may hurt similar efforts being undertaken at other campuses.

The school's contract with Barnes & Noble College, which leases the campus bookstore, requires the store to compile text lists for all classes but does not require it to release to others the list or changes made to it, according to the Eastern Progress, the student newspaper. Because it puts a lot of effort into researching and updating the list, B&N said it prefers not to share. As a result, the student government and others need to make regular "open records requests" to the university to receive the most up-to-date information.

Barnes & Noble will open a 27,000-sq.-ft. store in Aurora, Colo., a Denver suburb, in June 2006. The store, which will stock the usual nearly 200,000 book, music, DVD and magazine titles, will be in the Southlands Town Center at Highway E-470 and Smokey Hill Road. B&N already has a store in Aurora's Aurora City Center at 170 S. Abilene St.

The East West Bookshop of Seattle, Wash., which caters to people on all religious and spiritual paths, is profiled in Puget Sound Business Journal.

A nonprofit branch of Ananda Church, East West stocks some 20,000 titles and a range of sidelines, from music CDs and rental videos to "sacred implements" to yoga mats, air purifiers, shawls and jewelry. On average, it holds one event a day.

Sales in 2004 were $1.7 million. Margins are high in part because most of the 12 people on staff are members of the church and take "simple salaries and try to practice renunciation," Alexandra McGilloway, a Church board director said. That sounds like many general booksellers' policies--although they wouldn't put it so well.