Farmers’ Markets Attract Booksellers
By Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 4/10/2009 7:40:00 AM
On a typical Saturday from April to October, nearly 25,000 people flock to the Portland Farmers’ Market at Portland State University to buy flowers from Adelman Peony Gardens, Asian greens from Lucky Farms, peppers and rhubarb from Winters Farms… and this year, they’ll be able to purchase cookbooks and gardening books from Powell’s Books. “The partnership seemed so obvious,” said Powell’s customer services manager Michael Lamb, who is working to set up six carts holding nearly 1,000 books altogether at the market once a month from April through October. Powell’s isn’t the only North American bookseller to join forces with its local greenmarket; booksellers in California, Texas and elsewhere are realizing that that they too can benefit from the heightened interest in buying locally-grown, sustainable foods.
Lamb said the Portland Farmers’ Market approached him with the idea last fall. “I started looking at the numbers—they do within 22,000 and 25,000 people a day in the high season. Between 8 A.M. and 2 P.M., the numbers are outrageous. And a lot of those are tourists. It makes perfect sense to have Powell’s represented there.” Starting April 25 and continuing on the last Saturday of every month until October 24, Powell’s will bring six shelving carts, each one holding about 150 books, to a 10' x 20' booth in the Portland Farmers’ Market’s PSU location. Two carts will feature used books; one will feature new cooking and gardening titles; one will feature titles pertaining to green and sustainable living; and two will feature books on a particular theme that will change seasonally. The first several themes are “going to seed,” featuring titles about seed gardening and composting, and “locavores,” with books about preparing local food and eating locally. Later in the year, a “preserving” theme will feature books about “capturing the harvest,” and a “fun with fungi” theme will offer books about hunting and cooking mushrooms. Lamb said local chefs, farmers, bee keepers and others who have written cookbooks will stop by the Powell’s stand and sign books to sell.
Powell’s might be the only regular vendor at a farmers’ market, but elsewhere in the country (and in Canada, too), booksellers and farmers’ markets are working together. The Dane County Farmers’ Market in Madison, Wis., has had a successful used cookbook sale for the past two years at its indoor winter market. In Boulder, Colo., the Boulder Farmers’ Market has an agreement with the Boulder Book Store to list suggested reading from the market at the store, and the market puts a flyer in the bookstore saying what’s fresh at the market that week. The Union Square Greenmarket in New York City doesn’t allow any vendors besides those selling agricultural products, but frequently lets authors give demos and readings. And the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco, which attracts between 9,000 and 20,000 shoppers daily depending on the season, allows local independent bookstore Book Passage, which owns a shop inside the Ferry Building Marketplace, to sell books at the market, which is set up outside of the Ferry Building. For now, though, it only does so in conjunction to a cooking demonstration by a cookbook author, such as last Saturday’s demo by Janet Fletcher, author of Fresh from the Farmers' Market (Chronicle).
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there are nearly 4,700 farmer’s markets in the U.S., which reflects a 6.8% increase since 2006--and it may just be a matter of time before more market managers realize the benefits of letting booksellers in among the farmers. It happened with Tom Pink, who manages the Owen Sound Farmers’ Market in Owen Sound, Ontario: he initially refused offers from a local bookseller, About Books, who wanted to sell books at the market. “We try to only have vendors who make or grow their wares,” he said. But the bookstore’s Arwen Greenwood was so persistent in making a case for gardening and food related books as a good fit for a market, that Pink finally allowed the bookseller in.
