The Avid Reader Takes to the Tower

January 17, 2008

Before getting into bookselling, Stan Forbes had an unusual career combo: corporate litigator and farmer. He still tends his family's 100-year-old almond orchard, a low maintenance crop that leaves him time to run the nearly 5,000-square-foot Avid Reader at the Tower in Sacramento, California. Forbes opened the store this past April with co-owner Alzada Knickerbocker.

For The Avid Reader at the Tower's grand opening, 1,000 people came to celebrate, including the city council. "We had a wonderful cake in the shape of a stack of books, and several local authors," said Forbes.

Forbes and Knickerbocker opened the original Avid Reader in Davis in 1987. Knickerbocker is now the sole owner of the 3,300-square-foot Davis location and owns half of the Avid Reader at the Tower.

The Sacramento store, in the former location of Tower Books, is the largest independent between Bakersfield and Redding, said Forbes. To ready the space for The Avid Reader, Forbes and Knickerbocker gutted the building. "It had been built in 1928 and was a grocery store," he said. "We exposed the brick that had been covered up. Our colors are blue and white. Alzada had been on a trip to Greece and wanted to replicate the colors ... and we have all naturally stained wood shelves."

The store features especially strong children's literature, history, and fiction sections. Forbes also decided to create a sizable magazine section, which includes about 1,000 titles. Since Tower Books had carried magazines, Forbes felt customers would be expecting them. "We're big into meeting customer expectations, so we provide them," he said. "We have a great breadth of selections, and many magazines I've never heard of. But they sell. It's been successful."

Forbes noted that the store's customers have been conditioned to expect some new things, too -- including the Book Sense Picks fliers. "People come looking for them," he said. Shoppers have also come looking for the Book Sense gift cards, which the store "sold a ton of" during the holiday season.

Like the Davis location, The Avid Reader at the Tower hosts frequent events, off-site and on. Last week, the store hosted Maria Schriver (What's Heaven, Golden Books Adult) and Sue Miller (The Senator's Wife, Knopf). Upcoming is Geraldine Brooks (People of the Book, Viking).

The bookstore's celebration for the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in July was a big success -- an event that kids are still talking about, said Forbes. One of the highlights for the 500 or so participants, aside from getting the final installment of the series, was watching movies on the wall outside the store.

Showing movies in the store parking lot worked so well and drew so many people, Forbes plans to partner with Russ Solomon, the founder and former owner of Tower Records, who opened a music store across the parking lot from The Avid Reader, to host more of the same. "We'd like to team up this summer and hold a film fest and also have musicians play there on a regular basis."

Forbes said area residents were happy to continue to have a bookstore in the neighborhood. "People love the store," he said. "And, in all honesty, it's the prettiest store in Sacramento. We're very proud to be an independent bookstore. We wear it on our sleeve." --Karen Schechner

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