Rebel Bookseller: How to Improvise Your Own Indie Store and Beat Back the Chains

by Andrew Laties

Found this little number down at Powell's about a month ago... it looks decent, a little trad/posh standard for my tastes but hey, at least it's out there. Plus the author also founded Poverty Fighters.com:

A bit about the author Andy Laties: PovertyFighters.com’s co-founder/CEO, has been agitating for power to the people since he grew his hair long as a nine-year-old to protest the Vietnam War. After a stint co-editing his high school underground newspaper, FightForward, he co-founded the Yale Summer Children Theatre, then dropped out to study free-jazz with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, and improvisational theatre at Second City Players Workshop, in Chicago. He then studied shakuhachi in Tokyo at Soke Chikayusha and saxophone in Paris at the American School of Modern Music. He spent two years performing original stories by children across the USA, with Child’s Play Touring Theatre.

In 1985, he co-founded The Children’s Bookstore in Chicago, with Christine Bluhm. Their innovative special events captured them the Women’s National Book Association’s 1987 Lucille Micheels Pannell Award. Over the next ten years Chris and Andy sold a million children’s books, presented 2,000 free special events, and raised $300,000 for the Chicago schools. Andy taught bookselling for the American Booksellers Association and was the Dean of the Soros Foundation Latvia’s International Booksellers School, co-hosted by Janis Roze Bookstore.

The Children’s Bookstore was forced out of business by the book superstore chains in 1996, shortly after Andy and Chris opened the nation’s first privatized children’s museum store, at Chicago Children’s Museum. The Children’s Museum Store has generated $700,000 for the museum in the past six years.