Anita Zager, the owner of Duluth, Minn.’s Northern Lights Bookstore, who has been quietly looking for a buyer for her 17-year-old store since August, intends to close the store in late Feb. when her lease is up, if she has not found a buyer by then. Zager, a past president of the board of the Midwest Booksellers Association, cites family obligations as the impetus to leave bookselling, though the proliferation of e-books is also a factor.
“I believe we are at a ‘Gutenberg moment’ in publishing with the impact of electronic media,” Zager wrote Wednesday on a local community blog, “A new fresh approach is required for continued success in bookselling at the bricks and mortar level. My heart and head are distracted with other priorities and I do not have th energy to figure out what comes next for profitable bookselling.”
Zager opened Northern Lights Bookstore in a 900-square-foot retail space in the Canal Park district in August, 1993, just as the area was starting to become a popular dining and entertainment destination for both Duluthians and tourists to the city. Since then, the store has almost doubled in size to 1,700 square feet, with a Caribou Coffee shop next door. Besides Zager, the store has six part-time employees.###
