Northeastern Minnesota soon will become a little darker, as Anita Zager, owner of Northern Lights Books & Gifts in Duluth, confirmed this weekend that she has given up hope that she’ll find a buyer for the store she founded in 1993. The lights at Northern Lights will be officially extinguished on Jan. 15, 2011.
“I’m giving myself enough time to liquidate. I need to be completely moved out by the end of February,” she told PW, “And it’ll take some time to sell off the fixtures.” While she had “two or three serious offers,” she said, no one was able to put together the financing in time to keep the store’s doors open.
The last day for making special orders will be Dec. 20, and store gift cards will be honored while inventory lasts, or until Jan. 15. A liquidation sale will begin on Dec. 26, with discounts increasing each week until all the inventory is gone. Of Zager’s six part-time employees, two will stay until the end, while others will help out as needed after the holidays.
Zager announced Dec. 1 that if she couldn’t find a buyer, she would close her store in late February, when her lease was up. A perfect storm of events prompted Zager to retire from independent bookselling: the growing popularity of e-books and the subsequent impact on independent bookstores, as well as the death of her mother in July and the subsequent impact on her family obligations.
Zager’s next move is to manage the gift shop at the Lake Superior Maritime Museum, located two blocks away from her bookstore. “It’s seasonal and a lot less responsibility,” Zager told PW, adding that, in future, she intends to shop for books at the Bookstore at Fitger’s Brewery Complex, which will be the only independent bookstore left in Duluth after Northern Lights closes its doors. The Bookstore at Fitgers will start holding more author events, taking special orders, and will collaborate with the Duluth Public Library on the city’s “One Book, One Community” program. Northern Lights has been a co-sponsor of that project since it launched in 2002.
