Around Indies

Left Bank Holiday Book Drive for Ferguson Students Met with Overwhelming Support

Left Banks Books in St. Louis, Missouri, which in September started the book club #FergusonReads to foster a dialog about the police shooting of Michael Brown Jr. in the nearby community of Ferguson, this week sent out a note of thanks to customers for their “overwhelming show of support” for its 2014 Angel Tree Book Drive. The store, owned by Kris Kleindienst and Jarek Steele, said that customers donated books for all 326 students at Airport Elementary School in the Ferguson-Florissant School District to take home for the holidays in record time. A second effort garnered classroom copies for the school’s 17 teachers.

“Our staff and customers were obviously passionate about supporting these students, who all too often have a shortage of books to call their own,” said Left Bank Children’s and Teen Specialist Sarah Holt. “We are overwhelmed by the amount of support Angel Tree has received this year.”

Left Bank received donations for the students at the school, whose entire population is on a free and reduced lunch program, from all over the state of Missouri, as well as from Illinois, Arizona, New Jersey, Vermont, and Pennsylvania. Several authors also donated and took to social media to promote the drive, the store said, including Paula Stokes (The Art of Lainey), DuEwa Frazier (Deanne in the Middle), Sarah Bromley (A Murder of Magpies), and Laura McBride (The Weight of Blood).

Due to continued interest in the program, Left Bank is encouraging donations to River City Readers, a project of the Left Bank Books Foundation, which sponsors students in the St. Louis Public School system. Donations can be made through the foundation’s website.

Phinney Books’ Owner Shares Insights on His First Holiday Season

Author, Jeopardy! champion, and new bookstore owner Tom Nissley recently talked to The Stranger about what he’s learned since opening Phinney Books in Seattle this past spring. Nissley told The Stranger that his biggest surprise has been the receiving process. “Every day, we’re selling tons of books and that means every day I have to bring books back in,” so a good portion of the day is spent opening boxes, entering books into inventory, and then shelving them, he said. “We have eight square feet that’s not on the showroom floor,” Nissley explained about the space formerly occupied by Santoro’s, and so the unboxing of books “all happens behind the counter in a noticeable and not quite tidy way.”

The store, which recently hosted its first real author reading, features shelf-talkers written by customers. “I’m very happy to give the store over to other voices than mine, and to not just make it an echo chamber for the books that I love,” Nissley said. As part of the Indies First celebration on Small Business Saturday, Nissley asked a dozen authors for their holiday book-gift suggestions — one book they are giving this year, and one they’d love to receive — and the results are displayed in the store and on its website.

Nissley has also started a subscription program, called Phinney By Post, which a lot of people are buying as a Christmas gift for the readers in their lives. Every month, Phinney Books staff will select a book to mail to subscribers; six months out of the year, the books will be fiction, the other half will be nonfiction.

Taylor Books Adds Used Book Room

In addition to a café, art gallery, and studio space, Charleston, West Virginia’s Taylor Books will soon feature a used book room, the Merced Sun-Star reported. The store, which was opened by Ann Saville in 1995, also offers a broad inventory of new books, hard-to-find magazines, and gifts.

The used book room is being overseen by bookseller Joe Solomon, who previously ran a used bookstore on the Internet. Shelving for the new venture came from the store’s café and its initial inventory from a public library used book sale, as well as community donations. Before the used book room’s January launch, Taylor Books hopes to add more Appalachian and West Virginian titles, nonfiction, biographies, and essays.

“We want to create a library of beloved books,” Solomon told the Sun-Star. “We think that if we can fill the room with the books that people hold dear to them, then we’ll create a resource that’s really dear to the community.”