Bookstore Tourism: Is There Anything To This Idea?

About two years ago I started following the work of Larry Portzline, author of the book "Bookstore Tourism". The guy was convincing booklovers to get on tourbuses -- he'd escort them to great bookstores for a day of recreational bookhunting. Not only was he dragging customers to bookstores; he was doing his best to convince the movers and shakers in the bookselling, publishing and library fields that they ought to be getting with his program. He created a complex website, www.bookstoretourism.com, and put together a killer Board for a nascent organization called The National Council For Bookstore Tourism.

What a guy! I had a couple of email exchanges with him -- but of course I was busy and couldn't really think too hard about what he was up to.

But about a month ago I got caught up in a conversation on Jessica Stockton's blog, Written Nerd -- here on Blogger (http://writtennerd.blogspot.com) -- and I said the only really exciting new way for bookstores to be roped into working together was Larry's idea of busing customers along on a tour of a group of stores. And Jessica called me on it, in public, asking when Larry and I were going to stop talking and start doing something more serious.

Well Larry seems to be all about his National Council -- he wants to get other people running Bookstore Tourism companies. So -- I'm going to try to lauch what I'm calling The First real for-profit such. It will be called BiblioExpeditions (thanks to Heidi Stemple for helping develop this name). I'm going to start with a product that exactly copies the Greenwich Village Bookstore Tours which Larry developed in 2003 for bringing booklovers from Harrisburg, PA into NYC for the day. I'm going to aim to run 100 of these per year, from sites in a three-hour driving radius of New York. I must be crazy. Yes.

Here (below) is the business overview I cooked up last week. As you'll see I've built in my favorite themes of corporate sponsorship and financial kickbacks and incentives for all. Please feel free to lob jeers and insults (or constructive comments!) my way -- and, if you feel like investing in the business, I'll accept cash, credit cards, gold -- it's all good.

Your Crazed Colleague,

Andy



BIBLIOEXPEDITIONS

OVERVIEW AND MISSION BiblioExpeditions is the nation's first “Bookstore Tourism” company. A Massachusetts-based for-profit corporation, BiblioExpeditions aims to mobilize readers to channel funds to libraries and community bookstores by gathering public, corporate, and non-profit organization support to achieve the National Endowment for the Arts' (NEA) “Big Read” mission: “To restore reading to the center of American culture.”

DEMAND AND OPPORTUNITY The landmark NEA report "Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America" (2004) documented a dramatic decline in literary reading among all age groups, ethnic groups, and education levels. BiblioExpeditions, noting that these findings correlate with a sharp decline in the number of bookstores, implements cause-related marketing campaigns that leverage booklovers' tales of journeying to great bookstores in order to create an image-enhancing value proposition for corporate sponsors. Sponsors invest in Calvert Social Investment Foundation “Community Investment Notes” (CINs) that underwrite rotating credit facilities to strengthen our partner bookstores.

STIMULATING INDUSTRY INVOLVEMENT The American Booksellers Association’s stated commitment to promoting bookstore tourism, coupled with BiblioExpeditions’ library fundraising services and publisher product-marketing opportunities, are the tools BiblioExpeditions uses to educate and incent community booksellers and publishers to work together to raise the public profile of recreational bookhunting at independent bookstores, opening new avenues of access to readers, while capturing market share from chainstores and online booksellers.

MOBILIZING SUPPLY Utilizing the Key Initiators Network Strategy of our partner Capital Missions Company, BiblioExpeditions is developing a Community Bookselling Financial Linkage Network composed of corporate executives personally committed to overcoming economic and financial barriers to the growth of community bookselling. These Thought Leaders’ companies will act as BiblioExpeditions’ major sponsors.

PUBLIC SERVICES BiblioExpeditions produces fundraising package tours that escort library patrons to shop at bookstores located within a three-hour driving radius of the host libraries.

MARKETING APPROACH Library outreach campaigns encourage librarians and library volunteers to contemplate roles for themselves in the future resurgence of community bookselling. The National Council on Bookstore Tourism's white-paper publications and seminars at regional and national library conventions will introduce BiblioExpeditions and bookstore tourism to thousands of librarians and Friends of Libraries volunteers each year.

BOOKSTORE PARTNERS BiblioExpeditions will fund the bookstores that serve as our tour destinations. Current partners are New York City's The Strand, McNally Robinson, Books Of Wonder, Housing Works Used Book Cafe, Bluestockings, Vox Pop, Skyline Books, Macondo Books, East-West Books, Lectorum Books, 12th Street Books, Alabaster Bookshop, Partners & Crime, Biography Bookshop, Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks, Three Lives & Company, Oscar Wilde Bookshop, St. Mark's Bookshop, East Village Books, Shakespeare & Company, Mercer Street Books, New York University Book Center and Booksleaves. We will add as many as 30 more bookstores by late 2008, in Boston, Philadelphia and Washington D.C.