Guest Speaker Jeff Garrett- September 2, 2014

Jeff Garrett, with wife Nina proprietor of Bookends & Beginnings, a new independent bookstore in downtown Evanston, talked about the reasons for opening a bookstore in 2014--when it often looks like paper books have become an outmoded technology. Actually, he said, the market has improved notably for traditional independent bookstores following their near extinction in the face of competition from the giant chains in the 1990s and 2000s. The chains have been hit hard by online competition, especially by amazon, and at least one of them, Borders, has gone out of business. This leaves a deficit of places where people can actually handle books before buying them and be advised by experienced booksellers while doing so. Evanston--an educated (or even overeducated!) community--seemed to Jeff and his wife to be a perfect site for a new bookstore, and after almost three months in operation, it seems that their gamble is paying off: the store broke even in the month of August, which is not the best month of the year for retail. He closed by conducting a contest to see who could identify children's books in the following languages: Czech, Japanese, Greek, Persian, and (last but not least) Mayan. A good time was had by all, including the speaker!