In the Spotlight: ABA Board Candidate Dan Chartrand

April 03, 2008

This week, the bookstore members of the American Booksellers Association began receiving ballots to elect three booksellers to serve three-year terms as directors on the ABA Board. The mailing of the ballot and a postage-paid return envelope were sent via the U.S. Postal Service.

Director candidates up for election to serve terms beginning June 2008 are Dan Chartrand of Water Street Bookstore in Exeter, New Hampshire; Ken White of SFSU Bookstore in San Francisco; and Michael Tucker of Books Inc. in San Francisco, a current Board member who is eligible for a second three-year term. The ballot also includes space for write-in candidates.

Board officers on the ballot for approval by membership are Gayle Shanks of Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Arizona, for president, and Michael Tucker for vice-president/secretary. All ballots must be returned to ABA's auditors in the postage-paid envelope bearing a postmark no later than April 30 and must be received by May 7.

Over the next several weeks, Bookselling This Week will talk to all of the candidates on the ballot. This week, we start with Dan Chartrand of Water Street Bookstore in Exeter, New Hampshire.

Dan Chartrand

Dan Chartrand launched his bookselling career in 1981 during the holiday rush at Odegard's in St. Paul, Minnesota. "Within a couple of weeks I figured out it was something I wanted to do for a long time into the future," he said.

After a few years at Odegard's, Chartrand moved to Boston and worked at Reading International in Cambridge. He followed that up with a short stint in the marketing department at Houghton Mifflin and, later, served for several years as the executive director at what was then the New England Booksellers Association (NEBA). Chartrand co-founded Water Street Bookstore in 1991. A year ago, he bought out the interest of his longtime business partner, Bob Hugo.

In 1990, Chartrand was a founding board member of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE). ABA founded ABFFE, in part, in response to the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie, explained Chartrand. "Several bookstores were threatened. There had also been a fair number of attempts by Attorney General Meese to curtail First Amendment rights. ABFFE allowed booksellers to address First Amendment issues in a more coherent way than we had previously. And I think it's more relevant now than ever."

Water Street's specialties have always been contemporary fiction and children's books, along with history and politics. "Being in the Revolutionary [War] capital in New Hampshire, we specialize in American history and other historical subjects," said Chartrand. "And politics is the number-one recreational activity here, so we have a strong political section."

A recently completed renovation opened the wall between Water Street and the business' neighboring children's bookstore, Time of Wonder. The upshot is a space that's now 3,000 square feet with two front entrances and a new back opening that allows light to "roll through the back and front of the store."

At Water Street, Chartrand has focused on building a vital retail community and developing the bookstore so it's "large enough to be a draw for downtown in and of itself -- a reason to come downtown." With the help of manager Elizabethe Plante, the store has reached that goal, Chartrand said, partly because of an emphasis on localism. "We've been practicing a variant on the Buy Local theme," he explained. "Lots of people put more emphasis on the 'buy' than the 'local.' With the emphasis on the 'local,' the 'buy' will take care of itself."

If elected to the ABA Board, Chartrand plans to use experience gained as a former executive director of NEBA, which, he noted, would afford him a different vantage point than that of many other booksellers. "As someone who worked in an association, I understand that there are sometimes fewer resources than you'd like. It's remarkable what ABA has done to keep independent bookselling relevant. My first focus would be to emphasize how important it is to support the staff at the association as they continue to execute strategic policies and operate at such a high level." --Karen Schechner

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