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Bookstore Tourism Creates Travel Niche for Booklovers, Helps Indie Bookstores
"Bookstore Tourism" is an innovative grassroots effort ...
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Bookstore Tourism Creates Travel Niche for Booklovers, Helps Indie Bookstores
"Bookstore Tourism" is an innovative grassroots effort started by Harrisburg, PA writer Larry Portzline to promote and support independent bookstores by marketing them as a tourist destination and creating a new travel niche for booklovers. The primary goal is to encourage booklovers around the country to organize day-trips and other kinds of literary outings to cities and towns with interesting, fun and unique bookstores that people in their own communities may not be able to visit regularly.
Between July 2003 and June 2004, Portzline led six sold-out "bookstore adventures" to New York City and Washington, D.C. for two colleges in central Pennsylvania. Since launching the project, he's received countless inquiries and expressions of support from people in the bookselling, publishing and travel industries, from educators, libraries and colleges, from book festival and "One Book" organizers, and from booklovers everywhere who are eager to get involved.
"Bookstore Tourism" covers the basics of planning and promoting a bookstore road trip, including how to do the necessary research, arrange transportation, publicize the event, etc. It includes numerous tips and step-by-step suggestions, as well as advice based on Portzline's experiences leading his own bookstore adventures. Other features include a primer on the bookselling industry, examples of great bookstore towns, suggestions for ways to partner with other organizations and agencies, and an appendix with numerous resources for anyone planning a trip.
The Chicago Tribune said, "This little volume might be just the thing to get people not only reading again but visiting their local independents. Spread the word." The Boston Globe said, "Larry Portzline has taken a novel idea on the road." The Dallas Morning News said, "Bookstore lovers now have their own guidebook." USA Today called the idea "a charming alternative" when it selected Portzline's website, BookstoreTourism.com, as a "hot site" in May 2004. Publishers Weekly said it "might be the beginning of a new concept in bookselling."
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