Queen Anne Holds Court in Seattle

Cindy Mitchell and Patti McCall's habit started out innocently enough. Both were working as nurses and both were book club regulars at their local independent bookstore, Square One Books, in Seattle. McCall, who chose the titles for the book group, was steadily increasing the amount of time she spent at Square One and discovered that "she loved everything about books." Her next step was to get a part-time position at the store, and she encouraged Mitchell to join her. After about two years of part-time bookselling, McCall and Mitchell left their nursing careers, went hard core, and bought their own store -- Queen Anne Books in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle.

"I'm not sure how it ended up that we thought we could buy and run our own bookshop," said McCall. "But in our naivete, we didn't know what we didn't know." The duo had the advantage of starting with an existing store, which they bought in 1998 from Randy Brownlee and Alice Osborne, who established the business in 1989. Queen Anne Books is thriving and, last year, it moved up the street half a block, almost doubling its space to 2,400 square feet. "Our sales per square foot were really great in the old store, but now our customers say they don't have to leave to make room for someone else to fit," said McCall.

The move was actually prompted by the invitation of the owner of a nearby Cuban coffee shop who wanted Queen Anne Books for a neighbor, and who talked her landlord into building to suit the bookstore. The end result was that Mitchell and McCall got to design their store from the ground up. "I have to say, it's a beautiful store," said McCall. "It's a very soft palette of, primarily, sage green. The fixtures have oak facings and for lighting we use small, multicolored halogen lights. It creates a very festive atmosphere."

There are brick patios in the front and the back of the store, where there's also a garden, which is used for author events and book clubs. Authors who have appeared recently include Carmela and Steve D'Amico (Ella the Elegant Elephant, Arthur A. Levine Books). This July, Queen Anne will hold its Harry Potter party on both patios and will team up with the coffee shop, which will serve the requisite butter beer.

Queen Anne Books, McCall said, "takes advantage of all the Book Sense marketing programs." Mitchell and McCall maintain a rotating display of Book Sense Picks and signed on for the Book Sense gift card program as soon as it became available. The store has used the gift cards for the past two holiday seasons, and, McCall reported, "Customers love them." She added, "They're easy to use and sales are up significantly over paper certificates -- 20 percent this past December."

Queen Anne was the perfect location for a bookstore, said McCall. "It's five minutes from downtown Seattle. It's a very urban, upper middle-class neighborhood, and the people are packed in. One reason we do so well is people walk everywhere -- to the grocery store, the clothing store, the bookstore. There are a lot of families and a lot of kids. So the first thing we did was quadruple the children's section." The store devotes about a quarter of its space to children's literature. They also specialize in fiction and stock about 14,000 titles total.

While McCall notes that their location affords plenty of foot traffic, she attributes some of the bookstore's good health to Queen Anne's heavy involvement in neighborhood causes. "Our community involvement helps us not only stay successful but stand out. We've sponsored [various organizations] as soon as we could afford to, like Little League. We're involved in school bookfairs and our book club is huge -- we had to split it into two nights. Our community considers us a resource. That's important." --Karen Schechner