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Happy Monday! Hope you had a good weekend. Here’s an uplifting story to start the week off right. — Dan
How to Move 9,000 Books
Chelsea, Michigan, is a city about an hours drive west from Detroit. (Here’s a map.) Despite the “city” moniker, it’s a small town, home to about 5,500 people and not unlike what you’d see in similarly-sized American towns — there are schools, pizza places, parks, pharmacies, and of particular note to us, at least one bookstore. Located on South Main Street next to a bakery, a bbq place, and above an attorney’s office is Serendipity Books, and you can’t see it here on Google Street View, despite me having the address right. That’s because the Street View vehicle last went through downtown Chelsea in June 2024, and at the time, Serendipity was located on Middle Street, around the corner from their current location. (You can see the store, at its old location, on Street View here, if you’re interested.) It’s not a very far move — per Google Maps, the locations are only two minutes by foot from each other — but for the bookseller, it made a lot of sense. The new place has more room, and you need that space when you have more than 9,000 books for sale.
When the new location came available, owner Michelle Tuplin was excited — as she told CBS Evening News, she “knew it was going to be great.” But there was a problem: the 9,100 books on the shelves. She needed to move them from one store to the other.
Okay, that’s not a big problem. The obvious solution is that one Tuplin expected to avail herself of: she hired movers to move the bookcases, which were too heavy for her and her small team of booksellers to move. But she figured, the day before, she and the team could move the 9,000+ books around the corner. And they’d not be alone — at least a few customers offered to help their beloved local bookstore with their move to a larger, more customer-friendly space.
But a few customers didn’t show up one the day of the move. A lot of them did — roughly 300 people. That was enough to form two human chains connecting the old store to the new, as seen in the AP photo below (via CBC News).
Acting like a bucket brigade — you can see it in action at the CBS Evening News like above — the customers moved all 9,100 books across the 350-foot (105-meter) span about two hours. Tuplin told CBC Radio that “It was section by section, and so the crazy thing is that, really, items, for the most part, stayed in the right section and in alphabetical order. So for us in the new space, you know, there really is no unboxing or rearranging, re-alphabetizing. It's really pretty organized.”
The store was able to reopen a few weeks later, as planned. But the real magic wasn’t the efficiency — it was in the community coming together to help a small, beloved business. Oh, and it probably helped Serendipity’s customers discover some new books to read, too. As Tuplin told CBS News, “As people passed the books along, they said 'I have not read this' and 'that's a good one.'“
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From Italy to a Nasdaq Reservation
How do you follow record-setting success? Get stronger. Take Pacaso. Their real estate co-ownership tech set records in Paris and London in 2024. No surprise. Coldwell Banker says 40% of wealthy Americans plan to buy abroad within a year. So adding 10+ new international destinations, including three in Italy, is big. They even reserved the Nasdaq ticker PCSO.
Paid advertisement for Pacaso’s Regulation A offering. Read the offering circular at invest.pacaso.com. Reserving a ticker symbol is not a guarantee that the company will go public. Listing on the NASDAQ is subject to approvals.
More About Bookstores
Today’s Bonus fact: When readers buy books in used bookstores, authors rarely make any additional money — they get paid royalties for new books sold, not for old ones resold. (That said, as an author of three books, please continue to patronize used bookstores! They’re great.) But one exception is poet Wyn Cooper’s experience. One of his first poetry books, published in 1987, only sold 500 copies, but one of those copies ended up in a used bookstore in Pasadena, California. Then, serendipity (😀) struck, as Cooper recounted for the Academy of American Poets:
Bill Bottrell and Kevin Gilbert, Sheryl Crow’s producer and keyboard player, took a break from recording her first CD, Tuesday Night Music Club, for want of better lyrics to a tune they already had in mind. They went around the corner to Cliff’s Books in Pasadena, where they found a used copy of my book. They liked the poems, thought they fit the raw feelings they were after in her songs, and bought the book. They took it back to Sheryl, and asked her to sing “Fun” to the music.
His poem became the lyrics for Crow’s nearly-chart-topping hit “All I Wanna Do” in 1994, and Cooper was given a songwriting credit as a result. He earned significant royalties from the song and his book gained enough attention to warrant multiple reprints.
From the Archives: Why There are Still Borders in Malaysia: “Borders,” the bookstore, to be clear.
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And thanks! — Dan