In January, Book People will begin remodeling its third floor until, sometime in March, all of the third floor except for the author reading area becomes Whole Foods’ space. Why the loss of the third-floor bookshelf space? Book People CEO Phillip Sansone says that the move is a defensive one, that when “you’re virtually surrounded” by chains like Barnes & Noble and Borders, planning business strategy as an independent bookseller is a bit like “playing chess.” Book People’s strategy, however, is to move to the Austin MarketPlace at Sixth and Lamar by summer 1999. That space, presently Capitol Chevrolet-Geo, is slated to house an underground Target and a 17-screen Sony movie theatre. Brad Schlosser of Schlosser Development Corporation is the lead partner for the MarketPlace though the name of the entity developing the space is Austin MarketPlace, Inc., with Lamar-Sixth-Austin, Limited managing the space when operations begin in 1999. Book People already has a letter of intent from Austin MarketPlace, Inc. At one time, Borders expressed interest in building a store in the area but never made a serious bid.
Book People proudly bills itself as the largest bookstore in Texas, with some 300,000 titles, an amount Sansone now asserts is “too big for this market,” so that even if the chains weren’t in town, Book People would have had to reduce its size. In any event, Sansone says that 200,000 titles is a “comfortable” range for the store. Calls to all three local Barnes & Nobles place title amounts at 150,000 or slightly less; Borders places their title amount at “over 200,000.” Sansone acknowledges that “anything that moved up to the third floor didn’t sell well,” though he’s also fully aware that he’ll have to pull out the big guns to keep running a profitable, viable, debt-free business, saying that he and his investors knew when Book People opened that it would be an uphill battle, a “fight we asked for and now we have to stand up to it.” Book People will host Larry L. King, who is the spokesperson for a new Reader’s Digest anthology titled Are You Old Enough to Read This Book?: Reflections on Midlife on Tuesday, January 6, 7pm. I don’t mean to be snooty, but this anthology is full of names I just never associated with Reader’s Digest, names like Arthur Miller, John Updike, Elie Wiesel, and Susan Cheever; King also has a chapter in the book. When I spoke to King and told him my perception of the book, he acknowledged he had the same reaction; perhaps that’s why he got behind the project. King is now work-ing with Dick Holland, the former curator of the Southwestern Writers Collection Series, to publish a book of his correspondence, which King estimates comes from “some 40-odd years” of letter writing, with Holland now sifting through some 13,000-18,000 letters. King will work again with UT Press to have the letters published; Shannon Davies will be his editor. He’s also working on a first draft of a stage play tentatively titled Family Albums, six short sketches of six families, each sketch independent of the other… The Austin Writers’ League has just named its new executive director, Jim Bob McMillan, who comes to the AWL from a position as the Vice President for Community Development at the Texas Alliance for Education and the Arts… AWL board member Suzy Spencer just recently turned in her manuscript Burned to Kensington Books. The true crime, tentatively rack-size paperback is the story of the June 29, 1995 Austin murder of Regina Hartwell by Justin Thomas, now serving a life sentence. Thomas burned the victim’s body, and in her research Spencer uncovered fascinating little details like these: Hartwell had been the victim of cigarette burns virtually all her life, and, oddly enough, Thomas had had unfortunate run-ins with flammable objects before his final flame-out, the murder of Hartwell. On that bright note, happy holidays!
This article appears in December 26 • 1997 and December 26 • 1997 (Cover).