Spanning more than 570,000 square miles (2.3 times the size of Texas), Alaska is the largest state in the union, but its bookselling community remains remarkably close-knit, with several key players getting some of their early bookstore experience at the now-defunct Book Cache indie chain. Lynn Dixon, co-owner of Cook Inlet Book Company in Anchorage, was 12 when her parents opened Book Cache in 1959, the same year Alaska became the 49th state. In its heyday, Book Cache (a "cache" is an elevated storage space trappers used to keep supplies away from animals) had 21 stores before Dixon's parents sold it in 1989 to a company that eventually shut it all down.
Dixon and her husband, Ron, worked for her parents and then the new Cache owners until 1993, when they decided to open a 6,000-sq.-ft. store of their own, specializing in Alaskana and Northern books, in downtown Anchorage. "We're right inside a tourist district," said Dixon, a third-generation bookseller. "We did that on purpose; with the tourists, summer is our Christmas."
Tourism attracts more than a million visitors a year from May to September. For booksellers along the cruise ship route, tourism greatly affects book buying. Parnassus Books is in Ketchikan, one of the first cruise ship ports of call. Owner Maggie Freitag said having the right balance for locals and tourists along with getting books fast enough were her major concerns. "We get nothing in three days; we plan for eight days," she told PW.
Thirty-one years ago school teachers Debbie Reifenstein and Susan Hickey decided to open Hearthside Books in Juneau on a whim. Now they have two locations—a 4,300-sq.-ft. store in a mall and a 1,100-sq.-ft. store within walking distance of the docks. "Sometimes four or five big ships can bring an extra 30,000 people into town in a week," Reifenstein told PW. "Some just want bestsellers, but most often they want something local."
Tourism sales accounted for about a quarter of sales for Hearthside and as much as half of new book sales at other Alaska booksellers. Since there are no roads into Juneau and it is only accessible by sea and air, Reifenstein said Hearthside's shipping costs could be as much as 25% higher than for booksellers in the lower 48.
"We got spoiled with Baker & Taylor," said Don Muller, an owner of Old Harbor Books in Sitka. Several booksellers told PW that B&T shipped second-day air until recently, which worked out to be more like four days' delivery time for most Alaskan stores. "That's just part of being in Alaska," said Muller. "[B&T] still gets things here pretty quickly."
B&T's Bill Preston said having to jump over another country to get to its Alaskan clients proved a challenge. "For a vendor who pays freight for its customers, we've had to get pretty creative," he said. Of course, he couldn't share trade secrets.
Across the Gulf of Alaska, the Homer Bookstore faces similar challenges, but co-owner Sue Post (a Book Cache alumna) told PW that freight cost is precisely what keeps some of her customers from ordering online. "They want it fast, but then don't want to pay the $10 freight," said Post. "We don't charge for freight. The flip side of that is, it takes Ingram 10 days."
One of the largest bookstores in Alaska is Title Wave Books in Anchorage, with 33,000 square feet of new and used bookselling space. Title Wave expanded the store over four years ago, and other booksellers likened it to Powell's in Portland. Co-owner Steve Lloyd told PW that the staff has been working hard to expand its author program and has attracted national names like David Sedaris, Tobias Wolff, Christopher Moore and Maxine Hong Kingston in recent years.
Most Alaskan booksellers PW spoke with were located in cities too small to attract a national chain. Not so for Anchorage. But Dixon at Cook Inlet Book Company said she worked well with the Borders and Barnes & Noble in town. "They send people to us," she said. "They don't affect us too much, because they don't have the selection of regional books we have."
In March, B&N opened its first store in Fairbanks, which is inland, northeast of Anchorage. David Hollingsworth, owner of the indie Gulliver's Books, said the store has probably suffered a 20% hit in new book sales since B&N opened. Like other Alaskan booksellers, Hollingsworth (a Book Cache alum who actually cut his bookselling teeth at B. Dalton on the mainland) aims to focus on local talent to differentiate his store from competitors. Gulliver's has an entire room dedicated to Alaskana. "It's the backbone of our business," said Hollingsworth.
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