Communities are coming together coast to coast to save their cherished independent booksellers. Read "Who’s Buying the Bookstore" by Nathaniel Popper in today’s Wall Street Journal:

At the Community Bookstore, in Brooklyn, the owner,
Catherine Bohne, composed this email to her customers last February:
"I’ve gambled and staked everything I have, including every last asset,
every ounce of my energy, and . . . it seems it isn’t enough to make
things work."

These announcements have elicited swift replies from
coast to coast. After a June 2005 article appeared in a Eugene, Ore.,
newspaper proclaiming the imminent demise of that city’s Tsunami Books,
a group of professors from the local university offered some $35,000 to
save it. In the past year, the number of investors in Tsunami has grown
to 28 — who collectively own a third of it.