An independent bookstore that makes it to the grand old age of 20 is something to celebrate, particularly in this decade when we've seen independents putting "Going out of business" signs in their windows.
Back in September, Centuries & Sleuths in Forest Park, Illinois, hit the two-decade mark. Augie Aleksy launched his store 20 years ago in neighboring Oak Park. For all of his anniversary month—well, on Saturdays and Sundays—Augie brought in panels of writers to talk about their business of writing books and what's going on in the book biz . . . 55 writers in all. I was one of them, there on the first panel on the first Saturday.
If you've not met Augie before, today's your opportunity. Read on.
The man who worked his plan
Not everyone is a born entrepreneur.
Most of us who have started businesses first worked for someone else. Along the way we decided we could run the boss's store or Kwik Trip or factory better than the boss, so we banked away experience and contacts and then went out on our own.
I did it. I launched my own aviation business way back in the late 1960s.
I became what in the flying world is know as a fixed-base operator. I set up shop on an airfield where the competitor—Four Lakes Aviation—had beaten all comers.
Within a year, Four Lakes beat me, too, but that's a story for another time.
Augie Aleksy took a different track. He worked for a bank in Chicago. He then enrolled in an MBA program partially subsidized by the bank. This bank was taken over by the Federal Reserve and Augie calls their insensitive management teams. He decided to move on and accept an offer head the trust department of a bank in the western suburbs. The bank management's plans for the trust department changed over a year and a half, and they gave Augie his walking papers.
He applied for jobs at other financial institutions, and, during that interim, he read a book that would change his life—What Color is Your Parachute, subtitled A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers. That book caused him to consider what he'd like to do if he ever left the world of banking.
The idea of owning a bookstore had long claimed a corner in Augie's mind, so he talked to his wife—he laid out his thoughts—and she said go for it. So Augie used what he had learned in that MBA program to develop a business plan for a specialty bookstore, one that features history, mystery, and biography books exclusively.
"That's what I wanted, not a general bookstore," he says. "This was 1990, so Borders was already making headway into our area."
Step 1 was to determine the demand for the kind of bookstore Augie wanted, so he went to the main branch library in Oak Park to see what people were reading.
Wrong approach, said the retired business executives in SCORE with whom Augie was consulting. "They said, great, Augie, you're finding out what people are reading for nothing. You want to find out what people are paying for," what they're buying.
He then put together a 4-page survey to discover that and sent out 3,000 copies—2,000 to people in Oak Park and 1,000 to people in nearby River Forest—his prospective market area.
Mail surveys average about a 3-percent return. Send out 100 questionnaires, get three back. You want to guess at Augie's return?
Eighteen percent.
And now the bonus for Augie. He provided space on the questionnaire for people to offer comments.
"That's how I found out about Guild Books and several other stores. So I took the advice and visited these stores. It was a great experience," he says.
A side story. The SCORE consultants suggested Augie put a dollar in the envelope with each questionnaire, as a thank you to the recipients for participating in his survey. His mailer said, "Augie, a dollar is nothing. It's a token, so why don't you just put in a quarter?"
He did.
And he got enough quarters back with the returned questionnaires to fill a pickle jar. That jar of quarters now occupies a place of honor on a shelf in Augie's store.
His grin is as big as his store's front window. "What was remarkable," he says, "five years ago, for our fifteenth anniversary, I studied the business plan that I had put together back in 1990. These were my dreams, and they all became a reality . . . our Meeting of Minds program, our mystery discussion group. Sisters in Crime and the Midwest chapter of the Mystery Writers of America meeting here, those two are a bonus I never anticipated."
Moving around
Augie opened Centuries & Sleuths in Oak Park, on Garfield Street, in September 1990.
"We had Sir Peter Ustinov, Steve Allen, Senator Paul Simon, Sara Paretsky—a lot of the big names—come in for book events those first years, but our foot traffic in Oak Park wasn't what we needed," he says.
So he looked for a better place.
Mayor Daley's office wanted Augie to move his store down to the Loop. That would give him foot traffic, but he figured the people who worked in the Loop wouldn't come back downtown for evening events at his store.
"And I didn't want to be a nine-to-five employee," Augie says. "I like doing evening events."
So the Loop was out.
Forest Park looked attractive.
"Madison Street in Forest Park used to be known primarily for its taverns. The business people here, other than the tavern owners, wanted to change that image," he says.
Forest Park's Main Street Development Corporation threw money at Augie in the form of grants if he would come. "They were so supportive in the way they would go out of their way to help you."
The chamber of commerce helped, too.
"I don't know if you would call it repayment, but I serve on the chamber's board of directors, and last year I was president of the board."
Making the store special
How about putting England's Richard III on trial?
Would anyone come to your store for that?
Augie bet people would.
"An attorney, who was a customer of mine, heard me talk about it," he recalls. "He said whenever you're ready, I'll be one of the attorneys for you in the trial."
This guy lived on the same block as federal bankruptcy Judge Eugene Wedoff. He told Wedoff about the idea, and the judge volunteered to be the judge in the trial.
Wedoff is no slouch. In 2002-03, he's the judge who oversaw the bankruptcy of United Airlines.
"So we had a real judge sit in on the trial," Augie says. "I have a cousin who's an attorney, so we had an attorney for the prosecution and an attorney for the defense. And our store was just packed for the trial."
Bookstores have done wine tastings and chocolate events to bring people in, but few—and maybe none other than Centuries & Sleuths —has done tastings from full course dinners.
For this, Augie comes up with an idea or theme and presents it to either Paul Zeissler, a one-time food editor for a local paper, or Eleanor Hanson, a former Kraft employee. "I talk about the period and they do the research.
"The first event we had was 'Food on Campaign'—food from the Napoleonic era, from the American Civil War, and from the Spanish-American War.
"It's amazing. They made real hard tack and Irish stew. We thought we'd put the hard tack on the bottom and pour the stew over it. No matter how long you leave the stew on the hard tack, it's still hard tack."
Another evening's dinner was composed of foods from Agatha Christie's novels.
And there also was a Christmas dinner with foods from the Dickens era, and Christmas in the Middle East, when Christ was born.
"We talk about the period, the literature of that time, the foods of that time, and we try to put it all together," Augie says.
"Paul or Eleanor—whoever's doing the food for that night—before we start eating, they would give a lecture about the food, where their ideas started and how it evolved into what we were eating that night."
Meeting of Minds
Remember the Meeting of Minds series (1977-1981) that Steve Allen created and hosted for Public Television, where actors came into the studio in costume, portraying famous people for free-wheeling discussions of great issues?
Augie had always been impressed by those shows—and by Heinrich Van Loon's book, Van Loon's Lives, that uses similar themes—for their depth of thought and brilliance of conversation. He wanted to do the same thing at his store.
And he did and continues to do so.
Local people—customers and friends—have portrayed such characters as Martin Luther, Mayor Daley, Che Guevara, and Al Capone.
"There are no scripts. The sessions are question-driven, so our presenters have to know their characters and their histories and their thoughts so well that they can speak as if they really were them."
The first character to come in full costume was the woman who portrayed Queen Elizabeth the First. Augie remembers her. "She had the corrugated collar, everything. Since then, costumes are the standard. Some even rent costumes from costume shops that cater to actors.
"The great thing about a costume is it takes you out of who you are and puts you in that character, so you're willing to do things that you wouldn't have the guts to do in your regular street clothes."
But back to Steve Allen for a last story.
Allen had been to Augie's store twice for book signings, in 1992 and 1995.
"In 1992, I told Steve what I wanted to do with Meeting of Minds. He said go ahead and use the name, there's no copyright on the title of the program. He was very encouraging.
"In fact, it was because of Meeting of Minds that I got him here in 1992. He was on the board of the Museum of Broadcast Communications here in Chicago. I knew he came to Chicago on occasion for that, so I wrote him a letter and said you should come to our rehearsals and see what you think.
"Well, I got a call from his secretary, Christine Gutierrez. She said, 'Mr. Allen is in receipt of your letter. He's coming out with his autobiography, Hi-Ho, Steverino. He'd like to know if you'd want him at your store for a signing.' I said, 'You better believe it.' She said, 'Well, you have to have at least 200 people.'"
A challenge for a small independent bookstore. But Gutierrez and Augie worked out a date—a weekday, from 3:30 to 5:30 in the afternoon.
Augie advertised in the Chicago Tribune.
"The ad was about an inch and a half high"—not very big—"I told people how to get here from anywhere in the city by public transportation. I guess Kroch's & Brentano's got really ticked off, called the publisher and said, 'What the hell is he doing going to this small bookstore and he's not coming to Kroch's?'
"So the publisher set it up that Steve Allen would go to Kroch's at noon and my store in the afternoon. Now Kroch's could afford to put a picture of Steve in their ad. Now I don't know if the Tribune was playing games, but they put Kroch's ad on top, the picture below it, and my ad below the picture. It was beautiful placement."
According to the Wednesday Journal, a local newspaper, more than 300 people came to Augie's store for Steve Allen's appearance.
"I think we had more like 250," Augie says, "but he stayed. He cancelled his evening flight back to California because ours was the biggest turnout he'd had in quite a while. He stayed until the last person got his book signed.
"When Steve came here that afternoon, it was like The Tonight Show. In the old store, we had pillars in the center. I put out the dictionary stand and a stool for him to sit on, and he entertained the crowd. Everybody had a wonderful time."
© Jerry Peterson.
