Library offers the rare and unusual on-site
DOWNTOWN Craig Tepper spends his Thursday mornings browsing the aisles of a local little-known bookstore, in search of novels by two of his favorite authors: John Banville and Philip Roth.
But Tepper isn’t perusing the shelves of a Barnes and Noble or Borders bookstore where he would likely easily find the book of his choice. Instead, the thousands of books surrounding Tepper in the Friends of the Santa Monica Library Used Bookstore are often a hodgepodge of selections.
The chances of finding a particular novel are slim, but that doesn’t stop Tepper from visiting the store at least twice a week.
A project of the Friends of the Santa Monica Public Library, the used bookstore has fed the literary appetites of Santa Monicans like Tepper since its grand opening in January 2006, selling used books in good condition at an affordable price to raise money for the public library.
Located inside the new Main Library, the bookstore’s entire collection of approximately 10,000 books — ranging from novels to cookbooks, self-help guides to dictionaries, and study materials to autobiographies — have been donated by the public.
“The community has been very generous about donating,” said Martha Goode, co-chair of the Friends of the Santa Monica Library Bookstore.
The bookstore was spearheaded by former City Librarian Wini Allard and current Librarian Greg Mullen to give the Friends, which had previously sponsored biannual book sales to raise funds for the city’s public libraries, a permanent space inside the new main library, seeing the advantage of having a place to sell books continuously.
Since then, the Friends have gone from storing their books inside of the bomb shelter of the old library to an expansive space on the first floor of the new facility.
“Each library gets a huge amount of donated books and rather than throwing things away, it’s a way of recycling stuff in the community as well as generating money for the library,” said Kent Lewis, co-chair of the bookstore.
The bookstore generated $68,000 from January 2006 to January 2007, nearly all of which went to fund programs and initiatives at the Main Library, including the Summer Reading program for children. The extra revenue stream also helps the library play catch up in the constantly changing world of technology, paying for new DVDs to add to its collection, Mullen said.
Aside from funding the library, one of the goals of the bookstore is to increase literacy in the city, providing books at affordable rates.
Books range in price from about 50 cents to $5, depending on whether it’s a paperback or hardcover, and whether the book is considered to be of special interest, in which case it would be priced higher. The store occasionally holds special sales offering books for $5 per bag.
The cheap prices seem to work as customers keep coming back for more.
Rosita Mal, a volunteer at the bookstore, recalls a time when a woman came in, dropping $250 on used books. One regular customer buys nothing but Bibles, while another actually rents out a public storage space for all of his books.
Tepper has purchased about 50 books since the used bookstore opened along with the new Main Library in January 2006. Among the books he has purchased includes the hidden gems of the shelves such as out of print books or rare novels by famous authors. The used bookstore is the perfect place to find such gems, Tepper explained.
He’s determined to find copies of “Summer in Baden-Baden” by Leonid Tsypkin and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” by Oliver Sacks.
“That’ll show up here,” Tepper said of the Sacks novel.
The bookstore is staffed by approximately 55 volunteers. There are anywhere between four and six volunteers manning the bookstore at any one time.
When the volunteers aren’t busy assisting customers with locating something, they’re usually seen stacking or reorganizing the shelves to make way for the hundreds of books that come into the store each week. On some of the busier days, the bookstore will see anywhere from 400 to 800 books donated.
The volunteers here know many of their frequent customers by name; know their taste and the books they’re usually seeking ahead of time.
They chat with the customers, ask how their families are doing, whether they were ever able to find a particular book.
Josh Spencer has volunteered at the bookstore since January, seeing it as an opportunity to get out of the house during the day.
For a novelist like himself, working at the bookstore serves as a source of inspiration, checking out books and observing the type of customers that frequently come into the store.
“I run into a lot of strange characters in a place like this,” Spencer said. “There’s a lot of observing human behavior, a lot of subtleties in the store.”
The Friends of the Santa Monica Library Bookstore is located at 601 Santa Monica Blvd. For more information, call (310) 395-1951.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 18, 2007. Read the original PDF.