The Washington Post reports today that the bookstore will soon announce what customers and employees have long feared: The place is for sale.
The 26-year-old store’s owners, Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade, both 74 and so in sync they often wear the same colors without planning to, say they are simply too tired to keep steering Washington’s most prominent non-chain bookstore — a premier stop on top-shelf author tours and a frequent setting for book talks televised on C-SPAN — through the uncertainty of an industry threatened by e-books. Cohen is also seriously ill.
“It’s time for us to stop and let somebody else take over for the future,” Meade said during a quiet interview in the store’s cramped office. Cohen, eyes reddening, said, “I just don’t have the energy like I used to.”
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