An abrandonned used abandoned used car dealership, 40,000 square feet on one floor and over the past 30 years we have built and expanded, and the neighborhood around is has changed dramatically. What used to be a Light Industry strict is now a light retail district, and were surrounded by wonderful places like sir la tab and starbucks where we used to be surrounded by ball bearing manufacturing. The first paul opened in the 1960s in chicago. Hit dad, walter wall they were portland natives, came out to run the store when michael and his wildfire went on vacation. When walter returned to portland he decided the city needed a used book store so the 1971 he end occupy the first powells books in ported, oregon, but actually the second powells books. Im in front over the column of books and this is sort of symbolic of all the thing we have here at powells books. The basis says in latn, sell the book, and then over here it says, seize the book, and then over here itself says, read the book, and finally, our favorite, buy the book. It makes us unique is a combination of several things, and one of the most important one is that we actually start out as other used a used book store so we shelf new and used right next to each other. To us its the content it king, doesnt matter where the book came from. Half of our books are used, half of. The approximately new. You can be pulling a book off the shelf and looking at it and thinking thats going be a 20 book and then you find out its 7. 95 instead. So, i think thats unique. Welcome. Here we are in the orange room at the entrance. One of the entrances into the book store. We have seven different color code rooms, over a million books, and in this room, we have our cooking and humor, new arrivals, and over here we have our used book buying counter. We can do a couple of things for you. Were glad we have in almost every room an information counter and then we have a store map, and pauls is famous for its store maps. This gives you an example of how extensive our location is. And our store map also doubles as a poster so you can take it home with you and constantly be reminded of the riches that are in portland, oregon. So im going to take you to probably the most popular one of the moe pop most popular section, the literature section. First well go back to the second entrance to the book store. This is the green room. Its another Cash Register area and also a promotional display. I think the other unique think is our breadth of inventory. So, we have a million books but we have about 450,000 titles at any one time, which means we have one or two of most of the books in our store, which means we have a river that is miles and miles wide but about an inch deep. And so its all about selection and variety. To give you an example of the brent brent of inventory this, is our dickens section and starts down here and goes these entire case and then up to the section here. If youre looking for a copy of holiday hard items , Great Expectations you have eight of ten different types of Great Expectations. Youings buy the hardback, the paperback, the book club addition, large print edition, fancy new edition, or a nice older addition. Its a very enpsych low speedic version of everything dickens wrote. We have large events here and offsite events, and of the 500 events they range from signature to ten people showing up for a debut author or poet, to 500 to a thousand people showing up for jimmy carter, Bruce Springsteen, and so we spent about a decade, convincing publishers that this is a great venue for authors, and the incredible thing about portland, which i think is one of those small town feelings it has, even though its turned into a big city, is people here are avid performance goers, so, we would bring somebody in and we would think, oh, 10 or 15 people would show up and 40 5people would show up. So the citizens of portland have been incredibly supportive of the authors and that reflects back to new york and the publishers and they see that. Were now one of the top ten places to send an author. So, when Bruce Springsteen goes on a book store and is going to ten book stores we are proud to say were one of those ten book stores. I want to say what a thrill it is to be speaking at powells. In the life of an author there are various milestones, usually milestones are not particularly happy ones. Rejection, digging nord, a young man in the book there who helped rescue the book early on, but anyway, once you do find get a little momentum, the thought that you would one day be speaking at powells is amazing. This is one of the things on my bucket list and thank you for coming out. We keep doing what we have always done which is were passionate about the books we sell, were passion informant about the ability to hold the book in your hand and look at that book, and the serendipity that comes with having this incredible asoresment of books when youre walking down an aisle of this book store you have 100 opportunities every minute for your eye to catch on a different title, different author, different picture, and thats serendipity opens up a world to any shopper that is not that serendipity happens in a location. The importance of powells to literary life in portland goes back to 1971 when we started. 1971 the was a flourishing used book and some new book stores in portland that has really change edged dramatically over the years but pauls has powells remained and expand emt. He first moved in we were 15,000 square feet of books and now 75,000 retail square feet of becomes. Think it is a reason that some authors move to portland. We hear that often from authors that this is a resource for them, and its a place where they can meet kindrid souls, including authors who are coming through on tour. So when an author comes through on tour there will abe be many authors and in the audience as well listening to that person. So i think its been a nurturing relationship. Up next, author scott faris studies inga arvid. Inga arvad was one of the most alluring women to walk the earth. A very beautiful woman, miss denmark of 1931. But even as pretty as she appears in these photographs people who knew her said no photograph ever did he justice. You had to see her in person. She apparently had extraordinary charisma and she had a way about her that she would take over a room when she would walk into
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