Wordsmiths Books is opening on June 15 on Decatur Square in Decatur,
Ga., in a 1930s-era building that once housed the Decatur Post Office.
The 3,000-sq.-ft. store features a café and reading area; an area for
book club meetings; and event space capable of hosting 400 people.
Owner Zachary Steele said the store is planning a "massive grand
opening weekend" June 15. Marketing and publicity director Russ
Marshalek added the store aims to put on activities "for the entire
community that has helped and believed in Wordsmiths Books, including
events with local authors who have supported us so generously thus far.
We're a bookstore for book lovers, run by book lovers."
Wordsmiths has already been busy selling books online and helping organize the protest against the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's decision to let go its book editor.
Wordsmiths Books will be located at 141 E. Trinity Place, Decatur, Ga. 30030. Its website is wordsmithsbooks.com, which includes a blog.
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Edward McKay Used Books & More,
which has several stores in North Carolina, is moving its Fayetteville
store to space nearly twice as large as what it has now, the Fayetteville Observer
reported. Weirdly the move is occurring in part because the store's
second outlet in Fayetteville was wrecked when a car drove through its
front window last year, one many car-crashing-into-bookstores incidents of the past year.
The store has one of our favorite mottos: "Feeding your head since 1975."
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Some 69% of consumers research product features online, 68% compare
prices online and 58% find items online and then buy them in
bricks-and-mortar stores, according to an Accenture survey quoted by
Internet Retailer magazine. Fully 67% of the survey respondents said
they prefer to make purchases in physical stores.
"Instead of replacing bricks-and-mortar stores, the Internet is an
extension of consumers' in-store shopping experience providing a
resource to research product and price," Jeff Smith, global managing
director of Accenture's Retail division, told the magazine.
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Borders's 24-store operation in Australia, which is among parts of the
company's foreign operations that are for sale, has attracted interest
from the private equity firm that owns A&R Whitcoulls, which
operates the Angus & Robertson chain in Australia and Whitcoulls
bookstores in New Zealand, according to Reuters. The company is also interested in Borders's stores in New Zealand.
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Sherlock's Tomes bookstore,
Bridgeton, N.J.--a new store specialzing in mysteries, true crime and
British imports--and the Nuts and Berry's Book Club are paying the way
of Melanie Lynne Hauser, the author of Confessions of Super Mom (NAL),
to visit the town, according to the Bridgeton News.
Hauser, who lives in Chicago, will do a signing at the store, meet with
the group and visit students from three schools. Her book is about a
woman who has an accident with a Swiffer that gives her superhero
powers.
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"With rows of Afro-centric boutiques, cafes and soul
food restaurants shaded by tall old trees, Leimert Park has become a
serene enclave in the 15 years since a race riot tore apart its
neighborhood," as
Long Beach Press-Telegram described the South Central Los Angeles
neighborhood. But
residents and business owners of Leimert Park have begun to "fight over the
area itself--how it should be defined and who should live and work
there. . . . Merchants who revived Leimert Park (pronounced la-MERT) as
a black cultural hub are battling government officials, developers and
other shop owners who have a vision for bringing in new shoppers and
residents."
Not everyone is opposed to the changes,
however. James Fugate, co-owner of Eso Won bookstore, said, "If
you have a lot more people living here, you have a built-in customer
base."
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The April 29 anniversary of the 1992 L.A.
riots inspired a gathering Sunday at a vacant lot
that had once been the site of a bookstore. According to the Los Angeles Times,
community activists came together to condemn "the failure of
commercial developers and government officials to rebuild businesses
destroyed in the 1992 Los Angeles riots."
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
said he had known the owner of the bookstore, which was burned in the
rioting. "It was an African American-owned store, which shows it was
indiscriminate," he said.
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Sports Update
Have
you got the game to search for OP books? News from the retail book
world seldom finds its way onto ESPN's website, but in Monday's True Hoop column, Henry Abbott wrote, "David Halberstam's legendary book The Breaks of the Game . . .
is not easy to find at the moment. The cheapest copy on Amazon is $100.
Powell's, a massive bookstore headquartered a walk from where the
Blazer team in the book played, has no copies at all." [The book was No. 2 on Abebooks.com last week--see the last item today.]
In baseball news, the Associated Press (via Forbes) reported that Boston slugger David Ortiz signed copies of his memoir, Big Papi,
in enemy (aka Yankee) territory at a "Manhattan bookstore" on
Monday. Red Sox caps were sighted in the crowd, and New Yorkers
treated him well. The book? "We're talking about a book people love
reading," Ortiz said. "People love to get to know about all of us. In
my book I talk about my life and tell people that it doesn't matter
what you go through, if you keep on fighting you might get to the point
where you want to be."
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