LISNews: Librarian News

The last A Clean-Well Lighted Place for Books, on Van Ness in Opera Plaza in San Francisco, Calif., is for sale, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Low foot traffic and expensive parking on Van Ness are among reasons that sales have been declining for years. Owner Neal Sofman says "My long-term partners want out, and I don't have the capital to buy them out."

Sofman founded the original store in 1975 and opened the Opera Plaza location in 1982. The company's stores in Cupertino and Larkspur closed in the 1990s. Last month, Sofman sold the store's domain name, the very attractive www.bookstore.com.

Undoubtedly the domain name sale will help make ends meet. Sad when a virtual internet destination has so much monetary value, and a treasured independent bookstore with a brick and mortar location has so little.

Here's a report on the imminent closing of the Book Rack in Lodi, CA. Co-owners Charlotte and Cecil Brewer were looking forward to celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of their store this summer but now it's slated for closure. The reason...competition from the "killer Bs"(B&N and Borders), a term coined by Bill Maxwell, former owner of the now defunct Maxwell's Bookmark in Stockton.

The NY Daily News reports A Brooklyn book dealer lost his valuable collection of religious texts in a suspicious fire yesterday that gutted his store yesterday morning.
Sean Abrahams, 35, who operates Wisdom, Knowledge, Overstanding Books, at Pitkin Ave. in East New York, called 911 just after 10:30 a.m. after smelling smoke.

Within minutes, the rear of the store was on fire and the blaze was spreading to the second floor of the three-story building, he said.