On the Cape, A Wholesome Mix for Mind & Body

When Janis Brennan and Don Krohn, owners of Orleans Whole Food Store on Cape Cod, watched the closing of their community bookstore, Compass Rose Book Shop, they mourned the loss. It was one of the only businesses on Main Street that had been there longer than they had. So, last fall when space became available next to the foods store, they decided to open their own small general bookstore, Main Street Books. "It didn't seem right not to have a bookstore," said Brennan. "It was too sad. Orleans is a wonderful, literate town."

Husband and wife team Brennan and Krohn founded the Whole Food store nearly 30 years ago. Orleans Whole Food Store -- a 2,000-square-foot complete natural food store -- is in an old Victorian house built in the mid-1880s, "which isn't very old in New England," said Brennan. "There are houses around here that are 200 years older." The couple owns the building and has always rented out the attached 600-square-foot space. When, last fall, Krohn and Brennan's tenants moved to a larger location across the street, the family -- Brennan, Krohn, and their two children -- gathered to brainstorm about the available space and, Brennan said, "A light bulb seemed to go off in all our heads. Books!... It turns out it was a lot more work than we thought."

Main Street Books opened last April. How has the experience been so far? "Humbling," said Brennan, "but very exciting. We're both big readers and have our experience in retail, but we may have given ourselves more credit than we should have. As they say, 'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' We didn't have a business plan, so it's hard to say if we exceeded our expectations. But overall, we're very pleasantly surprised. We've had so many good wishes," said Brennan. "People are happy to see another bookstore on Main Street."

The couple has adopted the strategy of stocking the store, which has 5,200 titles, with as many categories as possible with the idea of culling the stragglers. They also depend heavily on customer suggestion. So far, the bestselling section is literary fiction with the mystery/thriller/suspense section selling stronger than Brennan anticipated.

The new booksellers have also adopted the Book Sense Picks as a buying guide. Brennan said, "Book Sense is fantastic! Given the small size of our store and the number of new books out there, some focus really helps. We have one section that's a display of the monthly picks and we sometimes do a Children's Picks display. The changing display is a really nice focus. As other booksellers told us they would, customers come looking for the lists. All the support material, but certainly the consumer-oriented material, is wonderful."

Main Street Books has so far featured a few author readings, but plans to expand that into a regular series. Brennan also mentioned a pick-up reading club in the works. "I'm hoping to have a drop-in book club. I got the idea from one of my favorite bookstores, Water Street Books, in Exeter [New Hampshire]. They post a sign announcing the book and date of the next book club meeting and people can drop in. It's great if people don't have time [to search for], or haven't found, a regular book club."

A top seller so far, said Brennan, is Kate Whouley's Cottage for Sale -- Must Be Moved, (Commonwealth Editions), which is set on the Cape, along with another Cape nonfiction title, The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home by George Howe Colt (Scribner). Whouley is a friend of Krohn and Brennan's and told them, "There's no better combination than a natural food store and a bookstore." Brennan said, "Customers can get a coffee in the food store, buy a book, and sit in the park next to us. You have to be a thinking person to care enough about what you're putting in your body to go to a natural food store. So that person might also be a reader. It's a nice synergy." --Karen Schechner