Notes: Japanese Buyer for Cody's?; Hue-Man & Hudson
The Berkeley Daily Planet
reported late yesterday that Cody's Books, which has a store in
Berkeley and a store in San Francisco, will be bought by either Hiroshi
Kagawa or his company, Yohan. Cody's owner Andy Ross will make an
announcement about the sale this morning, according to the paper.
Founded in 1953, Yohan is a major distributor of general foreign
books and magazines in Asia, owns several bookstores in Japan and last
year bought Stone Bridge Press, a Berkeley publisher that specializes
in books about Japan. Kagawa lives in Tokyo and New York and is CEO and
president of Yohan.
In July, Ross closed Cody's flagship store on Telegraph Avenue in
Berkeley. Last fall, Cody's opened a 20,000-sq.-ft., $3.5 million store
on Stockton Street in San Francisco.
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Hue-Man Bookstore, the African-American bookstore in New York City,
and Hudson Group, which operates more than 500 bookstores, newsstands
and other shops in airports and other transportation terminals, have
created a partnership under which some Hudson stores will have Hue-Man
sections, the Amsterdam News reported.
The first sections will be in some 50 bookstores in 10 cities,
including New York City, Chicago and Atlanta. Sara Hinckley, v-p of
book purchasing and promotions at Hudson, told the paper that Hue-Man
will stock its bays with children's books and adult bestsellers to
start. "They will blend their stock in with the store's existing stock,
but it will be properly branded with a Hue-Man sign," she said. "They
will determine which of these books will be best suited for the store
and its location. We will rely on them for recommendations."
Marva Allen, co-owner of Hue-Man, commented: "You have to meet your customers where they are."
The arrangement is similar to one between Hudson and Rueben Martinez,
owner of two Libreria Martinez Books and Art Gallery locations, in
Santa Ana and Lynwood, Calif., who is directing the selection of
Latino-related books and magazines at three Hudson News stores at John
Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, a program that may be expanded to other
Hudson stores (Shelf Awareness, August 10).
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Books-A-Million plans to repurchase up to $25 million of its stock, Reuters reported. In June, it began a program to buy $10 million of its stock, and so far has repurchased $4.4 million of its shares.
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Congratulations to Northshire Bookstore,
Manchester Center, Vt., which held a 30th anniversary party last week!
To see a few birthday photos, click here.
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Port Royal Bookstore on Hilton Head Island, S.C., will close next month, just before what would have been its 15th anniversary, the Hilton Head Island Packet reported. Owners John and Linda Stern told the paper that "the biggest blow" came 10 years ago when Barnes & Noble opened a store on the island. "The day they opened, they took 40% of our business and we never got it back," John Stern said.
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The Des Moines Register
covers the sad ending of Big Table Books, Ames, Iowa, a store that
opened in 1993, supported by 156 investors who raised $125,000. The aim
was to create something like Prairie Lights in Iowa City, but when a
Borders opened nearby in 2003, sales dropped 20%.
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Here's a twist. While many bookstores add more
and more sidelines, Kelly's Gift Place, Hollister, Calif., is
converting part of the store into a bookstore and coffee shop,
according to the Hollister Free Lance.
The paper wrote that "the renovation is just as much about encouraging
locals to hang out downtown when the urge to curl up with a good book
strikes instead of heading to an out-of-town mall as it is about
expanding" business.
"We always knew we wanted a bookstore to
be part of our business," Kelly Owczarzak, who owns the store with her husband, Todd, told the paper. The pair plan a
"secular/non-secular" bookstore that will specialize in Christian books
but also offer "women's lit," children's, self-help, self-discovery,
Spanish titles and mind/body/health.
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On
the other hand, Paradise Book and Gift Shop, a Christian bookstore in
Tunkhannock, Pa., is cutting back on books and adding more gifts and
"specialized items," according to the Scranton Times-Tribune.
Owner Patti St. Clair noted the loss of book sales to mass
merchandisers and chains and said, "If I carry different gifts that the
big stores don't carry and a bigger variety, that's probably where my
money will come in."
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The Booksmith/Musicsmith store in Orleans,
Mass., is moving on Tuesday to temporary space while a neighboring
Shaw's market is being demolished and expanded, the Cape Codder
reported. Owner Matt Reid told the paper the move should last six to
eight months. Because the temporary space is smaller, he said, "there
may be some stuff we can't (have in stock), but we planned it pretty
carefully, and we should be O.K."
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Pennie Clark Ianniciello, Costco's book buyer, has made White Ghost Girls by Alice Greenway (Grove Press/Black Cat, $13, 0802170188), which came out in paperback in February, her book pick of the month. In the September Costco Connection, which goes to many of the warehouse club's members, she wrote about the first-time author: "Greenway's experience of living in Hong Kong as a child is made obvious in every last, luscious and sensuous detail--which easily play to all five senses. The result is a novel of substance and beauty that will remain with readers long after the last page is done."
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The Ivy Bookshop, Baltimore, Md., which opened in 2001 in 1,200 square
feet of space in the Lake Falls Village Shopping Center, is moving into
new quarters with 2,400 square feet of space in the shopping center, in
November, according to the Jeffersonian.
Manager Barbara Richardson said that the store won't have to grow to fill the
new space. "We outgrew [the current space] about two years ago," she commented.
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The Union
of Grass Valley, Calif., profiles Words on Paper, which opened a year
ago and features "exclusively chosen pieces of literature, cards and,
of course, paper." Founder Julie Hiramatsu, who founded and used to own
Odyssey Books, told the paper, "I love cards and books and paper. I
wanted to share that with the community. I actually missed interacting
with the community and the book people in the community."
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The Bangor Daily News
profiles Chapter Two, a new gallery, bookstore and studio in Corea,
Me., owned by Rosemary and Garry Levin. (He is former manager of the
Borders bookstore in Bangor.)
Besides Garry's Accumulated Book Gallery, which stocks used books, the
store offers tea, coffee and snacks, arts, crafts, photos, antiques and
rug hooking. Chapter Two is the only shop in the village.
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The newest Books Inc. store, in the Opera Plaza location in San Francisco vacated earlier this year by A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, is opening September 27, according to the company's newsletter. The store will be connected via "a walk through" to Peet's Coffee & Tea and will celebrate the opening with an author event that night.
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LightWedge,
the Nantucket, Mass., company that makes wedge-shaped reading book
lights and portable lighting and magnification products, has made Inc. Magazine's list of the 500 fastest-growing companies in the country.
To appear on the Inc. 500 list, which is in the magazine's September
issue, companies have to be based in the U.S., independent and
privately held as of the end of last year. They need to have had at
least $600,000 in net sales in the last year and are ranked on revenue
growth from 2002.
Inc. described the flagship product as "a book light, but it's also a relationship saver. Using a tapered sliver of acrylic, the LightWedge directs soft beams of LED light onto a page without any of it escaping into the eyes of someone slumbering nearby."
CEO Jamey Bennett said the company's success stemmed from its "ability to meet consumers' craving for well-designed, stylish, useful consumer products."
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Zachary Marcus of Maverick Media Projects has been named director of
strategic marketing at the Literary Ventures Fund. The former marketing
director of Northshire Bookstore, Manchester Center, Vt., he earlier
worked at Elliott Bay Book Co. and the University Bookstore in Seattle,
Wash.
Marcus commented: "Together we can and will discover more readers for
books that matter--draw them out of their living rooms, and engage them
in community conversation with authors and each other."
Founded last year, Literary Ventures Fund
is a nonprofit foundation that supports works of fiction, nonfiction
and poetry that are "exceptionally well written, make an impact and
resonate with the reader."
