After learning that his local independent bookstore was closing, John Alberti, president of the collectibles company Windstone Editions, was so upset that he pledged a portion of his company's profits to regional independent booksellers associations across the country. Alberti used to purchase all his personal and professional books at the Book Grinders in Van Nuys, Calif., where he also ate lunch almost every day and often took clients for coffee breaks. "The whole community here grieved," Alberti said. "We still do."
Alberti saw the demise of this small bookstore/cafe as another casualty in the ongoing battle by the big chains to muscle minor independents out of the marketplace. But this time it was only a few blocks from his company's North Hollywood factory and office complex. So Alberti vowed to do something that might help save other small independents from suffering the same fate to which his favorite literary haunt had just succumbed.
Alberti asked the world-renowned Windstone sculptor M. Pena to create a line of functional sculpture that bookstores could sell alongside books. "I wanted something that wouldn't compete with book sales but would complement them," Alberti explained. "Something beautiful and totally different that would appeal to book lovers and look great displayed in bookstores."
So when Pena created a line of cast-stone bookends -- including dragons and crouching gargoyles -- Windstone quickly launched an unusual art-postcard marketing campaign touting the attributes of independents and targeted at the bookstores themselves. Alberti pledged that 10% of Windstone's profits from these new bookends will go to regional independent booksellers associations.
Apparently, Alberti's campaign is working. "We've had calls from bookstores across the country requesting that the postcards be made into everything from posters to T-shirts. Booksellers seem to like the message we're getting out about independents, as well as the unusual look of the bookends," Alberti noted.
Larry Hammer, owner of Time to Read Bookstore in Flemington, N.J., agrees. "I got my first order in, and one of the bookends sold before it was even out of the box. These are definitely going to be great holiday gifts for bookstores," he predicted.
