Regulator Bookshop in Durham, N.C., to Be Sold to Two Employees
Tom Campbell and John Valentine, longtime owners of the Regulator Bookshop, Durham, N.C., plan to sell the store to longtime employees Wander Lorentz de Haas and Elliot Berger and retire March 1, the Herald-Sun reported. Campbell and Valentine will retain ownership of the store's building.
On the store's blog, Campbell and Valentine wrote in part that "it has been a great privilege to run an independent, community bookstore in our fair town all of these years. We've had a great run, and we'd like to thank every one of the many thousands of marvelous people who have walked through our door over these years and kept this wonderful, unique place alive and thriving. Thank you!"
They added: "We can't imagine finding better people to carry on the spirit of the bookshop than Wander and Elliot. We think you're going to like what they have in store for you (so to speak...!)."
A former American Booksellers Association board member, Campbell told the paper, "It's just we are not as young as we once were and we were thinking of moving on. We had two people who were interested in taking over that we thought would do a good job, and it all kind of came together."
Campbell is a co-founder of the store, which celebrated its 40th anniversary last December, and Valentine joined the Regulator not long after it opened. Campbell added that the decision is "bittersweet, but mostly sweet."
Lorentz de Haas, who has been a Regulator employee for 27 years, told the Herald-Sun, "There is a real need to keep a community bookstore, where people can share intellectual ideas." Closing the store "would have left a void."
The new owners said customers can expect the store to continue to operate as it has, but they plan to make cosmetic changes to the interior and install a new POS and inventory software system to replace the current one, which dates to the 1990s.
The paper said that the store will soon launch a crowdfunding campaign to raise $63,000, which will be used to "hire an employee who would head up a literacy program and to start an annual book festival in Durham."
BINC.0408.T2.SPRINGFUNDRAISER.jpg)
Mary Gibbons and Aaron Lippelt, owners of 
Penguin Random House Publisher Services took its Ideas Exchange to Berkeley, Calif., last week. During the event, representatives from PRHPS and several of its clients did some field work, visiting Green Apple Books and City Lights Books in San Francisco.
"How I love a juicy memoir! I don't mean the scandalous tell-all kind (although those have their place). I mean the kind filled with insight and introspection. The kind that gives you a new understanding of the author. This month's book buyer's pick, Amy Tan's memoir, Where the Past Begins, delivers the kind of emotional mining that I enjoy.
Trio: The Tale of a Three-legged Cat
At South High School in Denver, Colo., Eddie Williams teaches an English Language Acquisition class for newcomers to the U.S. Many of his teenage students have survived war, displacement and other traumas before they immigrated; others are unaccompanied minors or undocumented. All of them face the challenge of not only learning English, but adjusting to life in a new culture. Journalist Helen Thorpe spent a year in Williams's class, observing and befriending the students and learning their stories. She shares their experiences and her own in her insightful, keen-eyed third book, The Newcomers. 