By Kerri Havnen Gordon

The Living Experiment

“What is the store hoping will happen?” I asked the salesclerk at Printers Inc. in Mountain View.

“We’re hoping someone comes along and buys us,” he replied. In our wealthy community, this doesnít seem too much to hope for. Without a benefactor, our community is at risk of losing two of the last local general-interest bookstores, and this would be an ernormous loss.

Our dear Heintzelman’s closed up shop last year. And then it was bad enough when Super Crown filed Chapter 11 earlier this year and began preparations to shut down its San Antonio Center store. Now we learn that Printers Inc. in Mountain View and on California Avenue in Palo Alto are at risk for closure as well, unless an investor steps forward and saves the day.

This is a classic David and Goliath tale. A trade association for independent booksellers claims that national book chains Barnes & Noble and Borders/Walden have unfairly secured more favorable credit terms than independent stores. An antitrust lawsuit goes before a San Francisco court this week to address this issue.

I’ll let the legal eagles do their thing in court while I imagine life without Heintzelman’s, Super Crown, and Printers Inc. It isn’t pretty.

One of my favorite pastimes is to slip away to a nearby bookstore for a quick hour and browse and buy with abandon. Nearby is the key word, here. As much as I like Kepler’s in Menlo Park, Border’s on University Avenue in Palo Alto and Barnes & Noble stores further south, all of these bookstores are simply too far away to be practical for everyday use.

It is hard to imagine growing up in a community with neither a bookstore nor a library, but that is how I grew up. The best way to get books was to rely on my parents’ generosity in buying monthly from the Scholastic order forms sent home from school. While I loved ordering books, sometimes they were either below or beyond my reading level, which was disappointing. How wonderful it would be if I could actually see the book before buying it.

When I was 9 or 10, I visited my first bookstore and couldn’t believe my good fortune in being surrounded by all those glorious books. What a treat it was to actually hold a book in my hand, to read the summary and the first paragraph or two before deciding whether to buy it.

I still feel this way, which is why I am no fan of Amazon.com.

So it is not surprising that I have spoiled my kids rotten when it comes to books. They have practically grown up in our beautiful Los Altos Library and our local bookstores, where they too have held books in their hand and decided whether they wanted to take them home. This is a wonderful privilege our wealthy community should be able to afford, both for our children and ourselves.

Thank goodness for Linden Tree, a venerable Los Altos staple for children’s books, and heaven help our community should they be shut out by the giants. Still, we need more general-interest bookstores.

Specifically, right now, we need Printers Inc. to stick around. They are the only general-interest booksellers left in our nearby community, and we cannot afford to lose them.

Is it unreasonable to hope a private benefactor will step in and save Printers Inc.? Perhaps. But there are philanthropic rewards to consider beyond return on investment. After all, anything that encourages the love of reading is a wise investment, indeed.

Gordon’s column is published the second week of the month. Send comments and suggestions to: Livingexperiment@pacbell.net