The five finalists hoping to be named Bookstore of the Year look like impossibly unequal competitors. Located in big cities and small towns from Florida to Washington state, some of them are multi-store giants, while others are little sanctuaries.
But each one has a chance of winning the title because size isn’t what counts in this annual competition conducted by Publishers Weekly. The judges — authors and publishing insiders — are looking for heart — along with excellence in hand-selling, community involvement, management-employee relations and merchandising.
Village Books &Paper Dreams in Bellingham is vying with Powell Books (Portland, Ore.), Books &Books (Coral Gables, Florida), McLean &Eakin (Petoskey, Michigan), and Left Bank Books (St. Louis) for the title.
“The people who work here are smart, generous and extremely engaged. It’s the compliment we hear most often about the store: ‘You have great people working here,’” said Chuck Robinson, co-founder of Village Books &Paper Dreams.
Before the winner is announced in early April, each of the five finalists will submit a portfolio to impress the judges.
Judith Rosen, Publishers Weekly’s bookselling editor, said this year’s finalists are “an eclectic list because it’s sometimes an author’s favorite store or sometimes a regional director executive’s hometown store, or it’s sometimes a great store that has slipped through the cracks. And even though the awards have been around for 22 years, it doesn’t seem like we’ve got to all the great ones yet.” (A store can win only once.)
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