Calvin Crosby, executive director of the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, has purchased Betsy Burton's majority share of The King's English Bookshop in Salt Lake City. He will be leaving CALIBA, and relocating to Utah to work at the store. Burton is retiring this summer after 44 years running the store. Crosby assume his ownership role July 1.
Crosby, who spend his childhood in Utah, will co-own the store with Anne Holman. He has a long resume of experience in bookselling and publishing, having served as both community relations director and manager with the California mini-chain Books Inc. for six years, and three years as general manager of Book Passage in Corte Madera, Calif. He also worked for a brief time as sales and marketing manager at McSweeney's.
On his more than six years at CALIBA, and previously with the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, Crosby said, "I have loved being a Californian and what we have turned the regional office into since Ann Seaton and I started. I am leaving the organization in good shape financially." Crosby praised the CALIBA board and said he is sure it is "more than capable" of taking CALIBA "into a post-pandemic world."
For her part, Betsy Burton says she hopes to take the time to write another book -- her first was The King’s English: Adventures of an Independent Bookseller (Gibbs Smith), published in 2005 -- and will continue to edit the Inkslinger, the store’s quarterly review publication, "to avoid too severe a case of literary withdrawal."
