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Curl up this summer with a good book
Silver Spring Books
by Ethan Goffman
Selling used books is difficult. Dealers
enter their profession through love of books, not love of money. Perhaps economic necessity explains why Silver Spring Books operates as a cooperative.
"We share space, expenses, and time," says Cynthia Parker, one of the cooperative's original founders.
The bookstore's three dealers each work two days a week, and each depends on an outside source of income. Why do they do it?
"Each of us is a bookaholic," says Parker.
Fellow dealer Dan Goodwin echoes Parker: "This is my calling."
Fourteen years ago, Parker was one of nine dealers at Imagination Books on Sligo Avenue in Silver Spring. When that shop was bought, she and three other dealers left and opened Silver Spring Books in January of 1992.
"I found this location," she says of the homey shop on Bonifant Street, crammed with romance novels, science fiction, history, psychology, sports, how-to guides, and infinitely more.
Despite the impact of online book sales, the shop continues to do a modest but steady business.
"People love to come in, browse, smell, and touch, find gems they weren't even looking for," says Parker.
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Photos: Ethan Goffman |
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Cynthia Parker, cooperative co-owner of Silver Spring Books, says that the shop (pictured, top) has always been a labor of love. |
The three owners run separate businesses within the single storefront, each shop with its own name, its own collection of books, and its own specialties. Thus the store has three separate collections of mysteries, and three of science-fiction. Dan Goodwin runs The Book Source, Margaret McNair runs Margie's Book Mania, and Parker runs Silver Spring Treasure Books.
Three stuffed cats stare down upon bookstore visitors. But only regulars know that the stuffed cats have names: Emerson, Emelio, and Ramses. The names are taken from characters in Elizabeth Peters' Egyptology Mysteries.
"If I lived upstairs, then we could have a store cat," says McNair.
Visiting D.C. bookshops often as a child, McNair dreamed of owning a bookstore and living in an apartment above, she says. Without an upstairs, creating a home for a cat is not feasible. Still, McNair says, the store is just what she has always wanted.
"I didn't get the apartment," she says, "but I do have the shop."
McNair specializes in mysteries and, to a lesser extent, science-fiction. She dislikes graphic violence, and prefers the "gentler, more cerebral mysteries, because it's a figuring out," she says. "Science fiction is a later interest that sort of happened. I found I like fantasy better. You let your mind soar, and it's usually not so end-of-the-worldish. Fantasy can be whatever you want it to be."
Although she is reading more hard-core science-fiction these days to discuss it with customers, she says that "clanking machines are just not for me."
Parker's penchant for reading began at three years old, she says.
"I just loved books. I would be in the library every week, taking out an armload of books, then return the next week."
Her store's specialty is romance novels. Some 25 years ago, her son gave her a romance novel, which was a change from the "heavy nonfiction and best-sellers" to which she was accustomed. She found that she enjoyed reading about relationships and courtship, with happy endings.
"I finish with a lighter feeling," she explains.
Parker believes that the romance genre is "given short shrift," perhaps because the these books are written by women and intended for a female audience. But she debunks the myth that the typical romance reader is a bored, uneducated housewife.
"The majority of romance readers," she says, "have college degrees and up."
Although Goodwin is especially interested in the history of science and in African American literature, he describes himself as a book generalist who enjoys buying, selling, and trading.
"I like finding books that can make a difference, especially for children--[books] that advance learning."
For Goodwin, much of the enjoyment of owning a used-book store is stocking it with his discoveries.
"I like going for the hunt and the find. You find some very surprising things in the funniest places. At yard sales you might find a book on gardening written in the 17th century, and you just say incredulously, 'what is this doing here?'"
With the all of renovations in downtown Silver Spring, one might expect a business boom for Silver Spring Books, but sales have improved only slightly. The dealer hope that this will change soon, however.
"Given our location, a block or two away from the main downtown, maybe it's up to us to draw people here," Goodwin says. "With the coming of condominiums on this block and on Wayne Avenue, we hope that we'll have more families coming and frequenting the bookstore."
With the spring weather, more customers are beginning to wander over from the core downtown. Parker attributes many of her customers to the "wonderful, family-owned ethnic restaurants" that line the nearby streets. She credits the Burmese restaurant Mandalay, recently moved from College Park, with drawing customers from its old location.
"They have made a difference," she says.
One notable impact on the store due to downtown revitalization has been a rise in rents. Many of the street's longer-running businesses are gone.
Fortunately, the property owner of the Silver Spring Books has been reasonable, Parker says, avoiding the excesses of the rent-raising frenzy.
"He likes books," says Parker. "He's been wonderful."
Besides rising rents, the Internet might seem a threat to used-book sellers. But McNair and Goodwin are taking advantage of the technology. McNair's online store provides him with an additional stream of revenue, and Goodwin buys and sells books through eBay auctions.
"[The Internet] really has opened up used books, collectible books, out-of-print books to everyone," Goodwin says.
Goodwin says that time will tell how the Internet will affect businesses such as Silver Spring Books. But he believes that bookstores have something more tangible and enjoyable than buying online, where the surprise of discovery is gone.
"There still might be a place for bookstores," Goodwin says. "[Here] people usually find something either they needed very much, which makes them happy, or something that was totally unexpected."
Recently retired from full-time employment, McNair hopes to continue buying, selling, poring over, and discussing books for many years. That enjoyment is what makes owning a book store, with its worries and its quirks, irreplaceable for her.
"You have to love it and hope you make some money. There's nothing like being around books. If you're depressed or mad, you come in and you smell the shop and you start handling books and you say, ah, let me breathe it in."
When will she retire from the book business? Not anytime soon, apparently.
"When it ceases to be fun," she says, "I won't do it anymore."
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