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After 47 years of business at 23 Bay View Street in Camden, ABCD Books closed its doors on September 8, 2009. Craig and Melissa Olson of Artisan Books and Bindery on Islesboro, ME, purchased the 20,000-plus book inventory, where you can find it in their shop and online at artisanbooksandbindery.com. Also, the Olsons welcome telephone call; you can reach them at
207/734-6852
during business hours. If called ahead, Craig also offers pick-up service for customers at the ferry terminal in Islesboro.
Barrie Pribyl, the former owner of ABCD Books, and the staff (Melissa, Jennifer, Becky, Ed, Anne, Dan and Virginia, the web manager) thank all their customers for their business and friendship over the years. We will miss serving you. Hodgie Burr, that special cat, has retired to Lincolnville Beach, ME, and is enjoying his new home. Marco, that skittish grey cat, has become a "cuddle bug" at his new home in Massachusetts. Barrie can be reached at barriepribyl@gmail.com.
Below is the article Barrie wrote for the Herald Gazatte, which also appeared on Villagesoup.com. It is reprinted here, on the ABCD Books website.
ABCD Books: in recognition and celebration
By Barrie Pribyl
Guest Columnist
(Aug 26, 2009): ABCD Books will close its doors on Sept. 8. The bookstore has anchored the mid-block of Bay View Street for 42 years, since it moved to Camden from Rockland. Lillian Berliawsky, the wife of Nathan Berliawsky, proprietor of the Thorndike Hotel there, started the business in 1962 in a retail space in the hotel basement.
With its carefully selected collection of 20,000 or so volumes, ABCD has been a destination for readers and collectors these many years. This summer we heard from our regular customers and friends that “there will never be another place like it.”
Many comment on Charlie, the life-size ceramic bulldog, who appears in the window in his transportation of choice, be it a wagon, sled, beach cart or toy truck. Others mention the hundreds of distinctive bookends, the intriguing antique toys, the much-desired original suffragette poster, and the elegance of the rare book room, with its bell-shaped ceiling lights and sconces.
The ABCD bookmark was a collectible in its own right, with designs by Dan Dalrymple, ranging from the whimsical to the political to the absurd, all featuring Charlie. A Christmas tradition was the empty straw-filled manger that appeared a few days before the holiday, and the swaddled infant doll that appeared on Dec. 24. Likewise, the same huge red geranium found its way to the front window periodically in gloomy or bleak weather. And always, until the last year, there was a cat or two in the window or in the store.
The photogenic Hodgie Burr was the subject of hundreds of customer photos, including two that wound up in a 2009 national cat calendar. He loved the attention, and the customers loved him. Hodgie Burr now is enjoying retirement in Lincolnville with four other cats and a dog, and our other cat, Marco, is settled in a new home in Massachusetts, where he is reportedly very content.
Like the cats, the books at ABCD will have a second life: they are moving up and out to Islesboro, just a ferry ride away from Lincolnville, at the Artisan Books and Bindery, a delightful shop owned and operated by Melissa and Craig Olson. The shop will be open year-round. Craig offers to meet potential customers at the ferry. Just call ahead, 207-734-6852, and he'll be there.
During the nearly 13 years I have owned ABCD Books, I have been supported by an extraordinary group of loyal employees, who have sacrificed monetary reward (there have been no increases in pay since the millennium!) to work in and among books and with customers who share their passion.
This group of stalwarts includes Melissa Graham, who also worked with Mrs. Berliawsky and who with me was responsible for the selection of books offered for sale; Jennifer Ruddy, who works with our repeat customers tracking down items for their libraries and collections; Becky Geesey, who, as e-commerce manager, has written more than 9,000 entries describing our books for sale online; Ed Shindle, who always has the latest news of goings-on around town, and mans the desk Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons in the summer; Anne Nevin, who has driven from Brooklin daily to work behind the counter when she is not otherwise employed in the film world; and Virginia Peckham, a friend and colleague from New York days, who is our Web designer and computer trouble-shooter.
Over the years supporting roles have been played by Dan Dalrymple, the aforementioned designer and illustrator of our bookmarks and creator of our more outrageous windows (who came back this summer to help organize the move and dress our windows for the last time); Lorrie Higgins; Lisa Scofield; and Eli and Eben Pariser, Sam Brosnan, Eliza Patton, Sarah Maddox and Bryana Turner, who started as a volunteer, shelving books when she was 14.
One may think the world of selling old books is just musty, dusty work. On the contrary, we have had more than our share of drama, discovery, romance and betrayal. Remember the time when we thought we lost Hodge and appealed to the public to help find him, only to learn later that he had curled up in a secret place to take a very long nap!
Remember the "Nuremburg Chronicle," that 1492 encyclopedia of the known world that we discovered in a Lincolnville farm house and put on display for a few weeks at the Camden Public Library!
Remember the time that we found $1,000 in $100 bills tucked away in a book and returned them to the unsuspecting owner!
And, not known to too many outside the store was that one of our employees found her true love through chatting to one of our customers on the phone and left us to join him. And that a supposed valued customer was actually a shop-lifter extraordinaire, stealing from other bookshops, selling or trading books with us, and then stealing books from us to trade and sell to others. A very dark episode in our bookstore lives.
It had been my plan to run the store until I could no longer lug bags of books up and down the stairs, but that plan did not take into account a major cultural shift in our society that has altered how most of us spend our leisure or disposable time. The Internet, with its blogs and its tyranny of e-mail, plus iPods and electronic readers have invaded our lives.
There is also the ease of ordering books online and having them delivered to our doorstep. These developments, coupled with a failing economy, have eroded ABCD Books' customer base, causing our receipts to fall while the costs of doing business have remained the same or escalated.
The business model of ABCD Books, where we have a year-round open shop and online business with a number of employees in a large space that is hard to heat in a prime retail location, has become unsustainable.
Fortunately for me and all of us, Melissa and Craig Olson have a more diversified business plan plus a book binding business that promises to be sustainable for a long time to come. I wish them luck and good fortune. And I encourage all our customers to visit them in Islesboro and on the Web, artisanbooksandbindery.com.
I would also like to acknowledge my business colleagues and friends in downtown Camden for their smarts, generosity and good humor; my friends and colleagues in the used and rare book trade, especially the members of the Maine Antiquarian Booksellers' Association, for sharing their knowledge when I was a newbie; and all of ABCD Books' customers and those from whom we purchased books, thank you all for a wonderful 13 years! You made my dream come true. |
