Smart Bitches Book Shopping

Awhile back I started a public map of booksellers that specialize in romance, new or used. Take a look:

View Smart Readers Buy Romance: A romance-friendly bookstore directory in a larger map

It’s public, so anyone should be able to add a bookstore to the listing.

I just added Second Hand Prose LLC at the suggestion of Shaina, because she sent me the following cellphone pictures from inside the bookstore that would make any Harlequin lover absolutely drop over with envy.

You ready to drool, all you ruthless Sicilian Greek Sheikh tycoon billionaire magnate surgeon duke fans? You want some of these?

image

There’s a whole WALL of them.

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I gotta go lie down now.

Categorized:

General Bitching...

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  1. Heather says:

    Great idea!  But, I’m ashamed to say, I don’t know how to post a location.  How do I post a store on the map?

    And I have to make one comment about Haslam’s in Clearwater.  It’s one of the best bookstores I have ever been in.  It’s the size of a city has about any genre you could ever wish for.  When my parents come to visit, I take them there to kill a couple hours.  And their romance section is 2 small rows.  Not exactly the most welcoming to romances.  If I want a book on poetry or religion or celtic mythology, I go there.  If I want any kind of paranormal romance, I’m out of luck.

    So is there a way to make comments about the stores?  There’s a store in Seffner that’s great for traditional series romances, but anything outside the romance mainstream is not going to be there.  But Book Swap in Tampa has all sorts of romances: series, contemporaries, erotic, and paranormal.

  2. caligi says:

    Driving to Acton now, zomg!

    Funny, Acton’s this small town as in the middle of nowhere as you can get in eastern MA, and yet it has these great small businesses. There’s an awesome knitting store there too.

  3. library addict says:

    I haven’t been there since I moved out of the state 2 years ago, but the Westgate Book Exchange in Vegas had a HUGE romance section including categories.  Plus the owner has a great trade policy where if you bring in books you get credit and pay less for the books you buy.

    The address is:
    3957 W Charleston Blvd
    Las Vegas, NV 89102
    702-877-9501

    lack53.  Well, yes, I do lack the technological savvy to add it to the map myself.  Sorry.

  4. JEAN says:

    nice…

  5. Jamie says:

    The Book Market in Ottawa doesn’t exactly specialize in romance novels. It’s a three-storey-plus-basement used book store, so it’s got a pretty sizeable selection of several genres, including but not limited to romance. It’s got the largest men’s adventure section (you know, series with names like Conqueror, Death Killer, Penetrator, and so on) I’ve ever seen.

    It’s also part of a used bookstore chain, which have another eight or so stores around—most in Ottawa, at least one in Montreal/Kirkland, and one in Kemptville.

  6. AgTigress says:

    Interesting distribution so far.  Some of the clustering simply reflects high population density/large cities, of course, but some must have other causes, like the tight cluster in the middle of Florida.
    But one should never judge distribution maps before they have been finished, of course.
    🙂

  7. Judy says:

    I love this idea but can’t figure out how to add a site.

    Please include
    Paperbacks Plus
    1250 Upper Front St. Ste 13
    Binghamton, NY 13901
    (607) 723-3486

    Over half the store is devoted to romance (also has large SF/Fan/Myst sections).  The staff is extremely knowledgeable.  If they haven’t got it, they will often search for it for you.  They also take trade-ins for book credit.

  8. Cassie says:

    Awesome! I have just added the two dedicated romance stores I know of in Australia, and am considering what chain stores I know with good selections.

  9. Shaina says:

    woot! i didnt know if you were actually going to share those! oh and just fyi, that WHOLE ROW of books past the white harlequins AND the row of bookcases facing them were ALL ROMANCE. their nora collection made me drool (and spend lots of money, and i’m not even done yet). just about any author you want, they got it. and everything is half-off the price on the cover. SHWEEEET.

    acton rocks. we made #16 on CNNMoney’s top places to live 🙂 (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2009/snapshots/CS2500380.html)

    <3

  10. Stelly says:

    That bookshelf is made of win!

  11. Lizzie (greeneyed fem) says:

    Oo, someone please add White Pine Used Books in White Pine, TN (about an hour outside of Knoxville).

    I was visiting my grandparents at the beginning of the summer and stopped in for the first time. Ladies, their romance selection is AMAZING. There is an ENTIRE SEPARATE ROOM for romances, and most of the shelves had the paperbacks stacked double deep. They have so many books, they break down the shelves by genre and type (vampire romance, highlander romance, regency romance, mystery romance, etc.), as well as alphabetical by author, with special sections for the big names.

    I didn’t have time to do serious three-hour digging, but I came away with a Laura Kinsale and a Loretta Chase.

    It’s in a very small town, but if you’re anywhere near it or passing close by, I’d definitely recommend a visit.

    Their site is whitepinebooks.com.

  12. Nicole says:

    If I work at a UBS, can I add it?  The romance section (I’m including category romance) in our HPB is larger than the other paperback sections.

    And Basically Books here in Cedar Rapids is awesome for new and used romance.

  13. Sarah says:

    I’m ashamed to admit that I can’t figure out how to add locations either. Can someone who can figure it out add Kepler’s Books and Magazines in Menlo Park CA? We just launched a brand new romance section, and we’re having a blast with it. 🙂

  14. karibelle says:

    I would like to second Dr. Frantz’s recommendation of Lori’s New and Used Books in Fayetteville, NC.  I wouldn’t say she specializes in romance, but it certainly comprises a substantial chunk of her inventory.  As my 8 y/o Smart Bitch-in-training said when we walked in the door “Oooooo.  It’s like a really cool little library in here!”  Fabulous!

    You better believe I’m also going to be checking out Edward McKay Used Books.  You can never have too much of an awesome thing!

  15. Cassie says:

    How to Add Locations to the Map

    You need to have a Google/Gmail account to add locations to the map. If you do, and you’re signed in, there’s a button that says “Edit” next to the title of the map in the left-hand window.

    When you’re in edit mode, there are three icons on the top left hand corner of the map window: a hand, a blue marker and something that looks like a graph, but is for drawing lines. Selecting the blue marker will allow you to place the marker on the map.

    If you put the address of the store in the search box at the top, Google Maps will switch you out of the Smart Readers map and take you to the location you specified, marked with a pink marker. But, at the bottom of the left hand window, there’s a list (although it’s hidden by default – click the “+” sign) which shows you all the recent maps you’ve looked at. If you tick the Smart Readers map as well as the map you just “created” by searching for a location, and then select (by clicking on the title) the Smart Readers map as the dominant map, you can see both maps. Place the blue marker over your pink marker, and add the location to the Smart Readers map.

    A description bubble will pop up, and if you add in your info and click “OK”, the information is saved. Click “Done” to log out of edit mode.

    Hope that helps!

  16. Heather says:

    Those directions did help a lot.  Although I couldn’t figure out how to meld the two maps together (change the pink marker to blue), so I just manually updated the info on the blue market.  Hey, whatever works.

  17. Cassie says:

    Although I couldn’t figure out how to meld the two maps together (change the pink marker to blue), so I just manually updated the info on the blue market.

    Yeah, as far as I know it doesn’t do anything automatically, you have to put it all in by hand. It would be nice if Google had an “Add location” button where you just put in the address and it placed the marker for you.

  18. Abby says:

    So, I have to tell you about the Bookrack in Lafayette, Louisiana… I was visiting my grandma, and my cousins took me… the place is over half romance novels, and they are subdivided into huge sections of Harlequin, historical, regency, contemporary, etc… there are some amazing old school hilarious covers, and they seem to have everything from really recent stuff to really old stuff.  If you are passing through Lafayette, check it out!  It’s made it far more tempting to visit my grandma…

  19. Ailsa says:

    I’m a little confused – there seem to be pins in Glasgow, Scotland, but when I click them, it just says ‘placemark 10’ or similar? Any suggestions?

  20. Cassie says:

    If you put a marker down, and don’t put anything in the info box, the marker’s just called “Placemark #”. There are a few in the middle of nowhere, like Placemark 64, which I was considering deleting, but I don’t know if that would be cool or not.

  21. emdee says:

    I thought you meant for placemark 64 to be in Tucson, where I used to live.  Please add

    Mostly Books
    6208 E Speedway (corner Speedway and Wilmot)
    Tucson, AZ 85712
    520-571-0110
    877-39BOOKS (toll free)

    This is an awesome UBS.  There is an entire room devoted to romance.  The system they use is realy good, too.  Initially you must purchase the books for half of their face value, but, you can bring any book purchased there back (stamped with their red rose logo) and exchange it one-for-one for another.  You can build up credit if yo have a lot to bring back, so that you can walk out with a sack full of books absolutely free.  I caught up on a lot of backlists of my favorite authors this way.

  22. JulieD says:

    It actually took me 10 min. to figure out how to add anything, and it would be a good thing if Google would just put something down where it says add to map, much less hair pulling and screaming would happen.

    spam: reason 28 why Google should should have add to map: my mother’s computer wouldn’t now be dead

  23. Sherri says:

    I added McDonald’s Book Exchange in Redmond, WA – great selection of all types of romance, including Harlequins/Silhouettes, etc.  They also have lots of other books, but I’d say 1/2 their inventory is romance.  Plus they’ve been around forever so they really know their stuff.

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