The Open Mind Center, a holistic center offering gifts, books, classes and services in the area of wellness, is opening in Roswell, Ga., a suburb north of Atlanta, and will have its grand opening celebration on Saturday, November 22. On that day, every 45 minutes prizes such as free nutritional analyses, massages, energy healing and more will be given away.
The Center has 6,800 square feet of space, of which about 1,000 square feet is devoted to retail. In that section, a quarter of the products will be books. The owner is Charmaine Taylor.
The Open Mind Center is located at 1575 Old Alabama Rd., Suite 213, Roswell, Ga. 30076; 678-243-5074; theopenmindcenter.com.
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The Read-a-thon held last weekend at Bear Pond Books, Montpelier, Vt., raised nearly $1,000, which will go to the Children's Literacy Foundaiton, the Montpelier Times Argus reported. Some 22 and a half hours into the round-the-clock event, four people were still reading.
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More on the imminent closing of Jeffery Amherst Bookshop, Amherst, Mass. Owners Howard and Joy Gersten, who are 78 and 74 respectively and understandably want to retire, had talked to some people about selling the shop, but "no one fit the bill," Howard told the Springfield Republican.
The pair bought the store 30 years ago sight unseen. Not only that, neither had bookstore experience. He worked in marketing in New York City and she had worked in a school library in New Jersey. "We always had a secret dream to own a bookstore," Howard said.
The paper noted, "But for 30 years, thanks in part to selling textbooks for Amherst College and stocking some for the University of Massachusetts, they have made a living." Howard added, "It's been fantastic. The people that we met and dealt with, the faculty the people at the (Amherst) college . . . so many writers."
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"You can go see a movie for $20 or you can read a book for $2 or
$3. It's a good time for people to spend the evening reading to their
kids," Ryan Osborne, owner of the Bookkeeper used bookstore,
Westminster, Colo., told TheDenverChannel.com,
which reported that Osborne "has had a slight increase in sales over
the last few weeks, possibly in connection with lower gas prices. But
he also said when times are tough, people are not only looking for
bargain buys, they go back to basics."
The news was not so
optimistic for Lynne Benedict, owner of Storyville Books, Denver, which
recently closed. "I was this close to being profitable. I could almost
taste it," she said. "And then the economy started turning into this
giant sucking black hole."
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Effective with spring 2009 titles, the New Press will be sold and distributed by the Perseus Books Group. New Press distribution has been handled by Norton.