September 17, 2005

Little bookstore that could be a venue for big names

BY CHERYL JACKSON STAFF REPORTER (Chicago Sun-Times)

Desiree Sanders, proprietor of Afrocentric Bookstore located on 47th & Martin Luther King Drive in the historic Bronzeville community, greets students from Northwestern University on Saturday, September 10, 2005. Approximately 50 students who are arriving freshman participated in the Freshman Urban Program student orientaiton tour of Bronzeville that was facilitated by Harold L. Lucas, ePublisher of www.bronzevilleonline.com.

Desiree Sanders brings a lot to Bronzeville. Since she opened her first Afrocentric Books location in 1990, the store has become a must-do for famous writers on publicity tours. Among those making recent trips were Michael Eric Dyson, Charles Ogletree, Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. Next month Fantasia, the American Idol winner, will autograph her new book there.

The visits, Sanders says, serve both the community and her as a businesswoman in a struggling sector of the book industry -- the black specialty bookstore. Black communities in the U.S. have seen the number of shops that cater to them dwindle even as the sum African-Americans spend on books rises. Blacks spent $326 million on books in 2003, up from $258 million in 1996, according to Chicago-based Target Market News. Still, Detroit's Apple Books and Baltimore's Sibanye shut their doors in 2003 and, last year, SisterSpace and Books in Washington, D.C., went out of business. The culprit, Sanders said, has been competition from the giant bookstore chains as well as on-line retailers that lure customers with deep discounts.

Sanders began enticing successful authors to her store for readings and book signings when in 1992 she saw that Bebe Moore Campbell was appearing at one of the major booksellers to promote Your Blues Ain't Like Mine. Sanders, who thought it unacceptable there was no tour stop at a Chicago black bookstore, phoned Moore's publicist -- and landed the novelist. That was the beginning of a flood of authors.

"I've been around for 15 years," Sanders says. "The store's name is branded. Now a lot of publishers contact us."

Because, she added, many best-selling African-American authors now understand that their customer base has its own bookstore, "they will make a conscious effort" to do both the big chains and Afrocentric. Dyson and others have even requested Sanders sell books at their non-store appearances.

It helps that her store is one of the few black bookstores that report to the New York Times, she said. Authors know sales are being tracked and want to make a favorable showing at Afrocentric.

Stores like hers are important to independent publishers. Smaller presses are able to get space on her shelves. It's a mutually beneficial relationship.

Sanders began selling books as a marketing major at Harold Washington College. Initially, she sold at neighborhood festivals. When book distributors noticed the volume she moved, they offered her backing to open a stationery business.

"It's not every day you find someone to invest in you," she said. So she deferred plans to transfer to Lincoln University and in 1990 took a spot in the rear of a beauty supply store at 234 S. Wabash. Her parents, owners of Sanders Landscaping Inc., also provided a loan to help with the venture, which took over the entire store in 1996.

That was a couple of years before the trifecta of Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale, Toni Morrison's Jazz and Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy hit the New York Times bestseller list almost simultaneously and put black consumers on the bookstore giants' radar.

In 1997 Sanders moved the shop to DePaul Center, 333 N. State. Armed with a $30,000 empowerment grant, in 2003 she opened a second location, Afrocentric Bookstore II, at 4655 S. King Dr. in Bronzeville. Last year, however, DePaul dealt a blow when it asked her and other small retailers on the first floor to leave. The customer base there was more diverse, Sanders said, and the heavier foot traffic meant more sales. Revenues at DePaul were in the "mid six figures," but in Bronzeville have fallen to the the "low six figures."

But the Bronzeville store has triple the space the DePaul Center shop had -- 4,000 square feet vs. 1,300. And she added a children's section. "We're really trying to build up" those figures again, she said.

There's hope for that. The Bronzeville location is part of a mall community that includes a coffee shop, restaurant and art gallery and sits across from the Harold Washington Cultural Center, putting her at the heart of one of Chicago's most historic communities.

"Because it's in the community, it's like I see my work affecting people even more," she said. She now works directly with schools and literacy programs. Last summer, for example, the store hosted a program in which children read the works of black authors and acted out scenes from them. "That was rewarding," she said. She brings authors not only to her store but also to churches, schools and other such venues.

One of the top sellers at Afrocentric is Bronzeville, a photo book popular with tourists who want to take a piece of the community back home with them. Locals who flip through the book while at the store squeal when they recognize their relatives in the photos.

Like all bookstores, Afrocentric gives the customers what they want. These days there's a big demand for urban, hip-hop-themed novels of street life such as those by Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim.

That's not her thing, says Sanders, mother of two: "My personal tastes are to the metaphysical and inspirational." She's now reading Joel Osteen's best-selling Your Best Life Now.

Maybe that could describe her life, too.

Appeared September 11, 2005 in the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper