Sharon Anderson Wright d sn't do anything halfheartedly. When her bookstore chain, Half Price Books, whose headquarters are in Dallas, started a campaign to create children's libraries in pediatric hospitals and medical facilities across the country this past January, she donated more than 80,000 volumes collected in community book drives. Since then, her Half Pint Library program has created libraries at hospitals in 17 of the chain's 19 markets.

The Half Pint Library program is just one of the ways Wright, 40, the president and CEO of Half Price Books, has kept her new-and-used bookstore chain on the map -- and thriving as one of the largest independent bookstore empires in the country -- despite competition from Borders Books & Music and Barnes & Noble. When Wright, better known as "Boots," took over the 27-year-old company in 1996 after the death of her mother -- the chain's cofounder, Pat Anderson -- she inherited a 47-store, $59-million operation. Since then, she's grown it to 61 stores with $70 million in sales. Plans to open two new stores, in Pittsburgh and Everett, Wash., are underway for 1999.

Her success secret? Run a lean operation, treat your employees well and the rest will come. Embracing the unconventional approach that took shape when her mother and partner Ken Gjemre -- active members of the local counterculture scene -- founded Half Price Books in an abandoned Laundromat on Dallas's Lover's Lane in 1972, Wright often shows up for work in a T-shirt and shorts, sometimes with her infant son in tow. She works from an office in a barely renovated building that once housed a restaurant (the bar downstairs is still intact but unused). But her relaxed management style and easy Texas drawl belie a keen business sense.

In an era when opening 45 stores a year isn't unusual for the megastore chains, Wright has succeeded by opening two or three stores a year, and only in cities where one of her trained managers wants to live. "If there's no interest in going there, we don't force people to do it," she told PW. "We just don't go there. We never hire managers from outside." She also avoids debt, branching out only when she has the cash on hand. "We're just patient," she said. "If we can't afford it, we tend not to do it." Rather than sink money into new construction, she prefers to rent or buy existing retail space.

As a result, each store has its own unique quirks, such as the fountain left by a previous tenant in one of the chain's Dallas stores. Although the bookstores, which range in size from 4000 to 30,000 square feet, are clean and airy, many of the furnishings are secondhand; the rest come from a woodshop run by employees.

Knowing how to keep its 1102 employees happy is vital to the company's staying power. "We could never survive if we didn't have the people working for us that we have," noted Wright, who has been able to attract a well-educated workforce dominated by writers, artists, actors and musicians. "People just come and stay," she added.

Besides offering salaries competitive with Barnes & Noble and Borders, Half Price Books provides full medical benefits (including dental and eye care), a 401(k) with a 50% matching contribution by the company and 24 days off each year. The chain is also able to return 20%“30% of its profits to employees each year, thanks, in part, to the savings that come from lean corporate staffing and Wright's policy of capping executive salaries -- including her own -- at $90,000 a year. The profits are divided equally among all employees. "I think our success secret is we keep passing the money back to the employees," explained Wright, who at 14 was the company's first employee. "They have a personal stake in Half Price Books and personal pride in making it succeed. Some of the big chains don't have that."

With a Borders bookstore up the road from the flagship store next to her office on Northwest Highway, Wright is well aware of the competition. (Average sales at Half Price Books stores are $13“$14 per square foot, compared to Borders' $256 per square foot.) Rather than try to beat them, Wright has turned her potential rivals into allies. "We have a real symbiotic relationship with the big chains in most of our cities," she told PW. "Our customers tend to come to us first. We recommend Borders and Barnes & Noble to our customers if they're looking for the new Stephen King or John Grisham novel and we don't have it. [The big chains] recommend us for out-of-print books and a different mix."

Nonetheless, Wright isn't resting easy, although same-store sales are up 5.7% so far this year. On September 23, the chain plans to hold the grand opening for its brand-new corporate offices and flagship store across the street from its old digs, both of which will occupy a newly purchased 100,000-sq.-ft. building that formerly housed a sporting goods store. The store will cover 53,000 square feet -- double the size of the old flagship store -- and hold 500,000 books as well as a selection of CDs, albums and laser discs. The building will also include Black Forest Coffee, a locally run European deli and bakery, and a donation warehouse for future book drives.

Company officials say the store may well be the biggest bookstore in Texas. At the same time, Half Price Books is working on launching its own, yet unnamed, imprint. "We are expanding when bookstores are going out of business," noted Kathy Doyle Thomas, vice-president of Half Price Books. "We're different from Borders and Barnes & Noble and we're different from the independents, and that's how we're able to survive."

Pofeldt is a freelance writer and editor based in Hoboken, N.J. Her stories have appeared in Forbes, Crain's New York Business and the Los Angeles Times.