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Opening Soon

tom

Opening Soon

By tom on January 21, 2012 | Add a Comment

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RiverRun announces tentative reopening date of February 10th!!  I cannot wait!! 

If you have a strong back and are available on Saturday, February 4th, at 10am we need your help moving book cases out of storage and into the new space at 142 Fleet St.  Send me an email at info@riverrunbookstore.com if you can help. The project should take about two hours. 

The new store will be ridiculously beautiful.  The folks at The Ben Franklin Block are pulling out the stops to give the space a stylish, historic feel.  Yes, the store will be smaller, but it will be cozy, and filled to the brim with the best books we can find.

Please stay tuned for more announcements about spring events, new projects and programs, an updated website, and our Grand Re-Opening Extravaganza.

Thanks,

Tom 

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Book Brigade this Thursday!!

We were hoping to extend our lease through January, but nope! Gotta be out on December 31st.  That's, ohhh, four days from now!!  We will be holding our Book Brigade on Thursday, December 29th at 1:45.  Please let us know if you can help out.

 

We also need STRONG people on Friday morning at 10am to help move bookcases into storage.

 

RiverRun will be closed from December 30th through January 31st, and then we will open in our new location at 142 Fleet St right here in beautiful downtown Portsmouth.  Meanwhile, we hope you will order books from our website.  Just click on the Buy Books Online button and go to it.

 

See you soon,

 

 

Tom 

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RiverRun Bookstore will live on!

RiverRun Bookstore will move to a new location in January:  Right around the corner to 142 Fleet St!!  Additionally, I am proud to announce that RiverRun is now owned by a collection of 15 seacoast residents who came together to make sure that the bookstore would not close, and could return to financial viability.

 

In the meantime, we will be open through the holidays for all your gift giving needs.  Hand-picked staff recommendations, free gift wrapping, gift cards-- all the usual things that make shopping in downtown Portsmouth a great experience.

 

Thank you for your support!

 

 

Tom 

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Results of Community Meeting

tom

Results of Community Meeting

By tom on November 10, 2011 | 4 comments

Hello all!  Tonight about 150 people crammed into RiverRun to discuss its future, if it has one.  I spent the first part of the meeting explaining why I thought the store deserved saving, and why I thought I had a plan that would make it sustainable going forward, including the good news that we have a tentative line on a new location that would save us over $50,000 a year in expenses.  

 

Next up was a Q&A session, mostly questioning the current state of affairs concerning ebooks etc.  I did my best to answer those questions.  

 

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RiverRun seeks donations and investors

RiverRun plans to move at the end of the year and needs to raise more than $100,000 to ensure its future for the next several years.  We believe that if we get a handle on the debt we've accrued over the past three grueling years, and move to a slightly smaller, much much cheaper location, we can once again be the outstanding member of our community, both physical and virtual, that you have come to expect, and for many years to come.  

If you are interested in helping, we will be meeting at RiverRun on Wednesday, November 9th at 7:00pm.  Right now we are looking for people to make donations of any amount to help the store along.  This can be done via PayPal on our homepage.  

 

Thanks,

 

Tom 

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Trigger Happy

The State of the Bookstore

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Hi Everybody,
 
I wanted to share with you an email complaint I received, and my response to it, because I think it encapsulates pretty well many of the frustrations plaguing the bookselling world right now, and the pain and turmoil that comes from an entire industry being turned upside down.  Add to that a recession that wont seem to end and things might seem bleak.  My customers aren't happy, the publishers aren't happy, and neither am I.  But I do believe that things are getting better.  RiverRun is slowly getting over this perfect storm of bad economy, bad weather, bad management, and changing industry.  It's your support that keeps us going, and each day the store is recovering a little more thanks to you.read more

Women Writers sitting next to Tom!

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Our partnership with The Music Hall just gets better and better.  Did you miss out on tickets for Neil Gaiman or David McCullough?  You can still get a signed book, even if you can't make the show.  Give us call.

 

Our Music Hall partnership has expanded this year with new events at The Loft.  Here's me with Jennifer Egan at our awesome, awesome Writers in the Loft series. 

eganegan

 

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Women Writers

tom

Women Writers

By tom on June 06, 2011 | Add a Comment

The Arrivals by Meg Mitchell Moore
Pre-order a Signed Copy
We've got an amazing roster of female creative writers this month.  Please, please come to an event.  These women are incredible, talented, and worthy of your time.  Click on our events button and take a look. Ann Joslin Williams, Emma Straub, Kate Christensen, Jami Attenberg, Eleanor Henderson, Courtney Sullivan, Ewa Chrusciel, and Meg Mitchell Moore.

Bring yourself, a friend, your whole book group, but please--  support this kind of literary programming if you think it is important.

We'll see you there.
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Kate talks about transitioning from SecondRun to RiverRun

 

So it's been just about a month since we revamped/reopened....what do y'all think?

The feedback we've been getting has so far been positive, but if you haven't weighed in, we'd love to hear from you!

Personally, I'm relieved it is going well. It was very hard to leave SecondRun, as it had become a very special place to me on many levels.

But now I have the best of both worlds, I get to work with not just ONE other fabulous employee, but FIVE more!!!!  And the fact that I'm trundling home bundles of books EVERY night is completely reasonable, seeing as it's imperative that I be a well-informed, well-read bookseller of not just the older books... and spring is going to spring soon, so I won't need oil much longer....

Anyway... hope you all will be dropping by soon and regularly... new/used books are arriving daily!

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