Bookseller Promotes Well-Known Author, His Wife

The book signings draw between 200 and 350 people, who start lining up before the store opens at 10 a.m. The signings are scheduled from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. but Wilder says, they usually run an hour or two longer.

The popularity of the book signings was a major reason Wilder expanded the store a few years ago into an adjacent building with a large first floor room.

He bought the store's original building, a pre-Civil War townhouse with cozy rooms for book browsing, "after walking from one end of Boonsboro to the other to see what was available.

"I had looked at Keedysville [near his and Robert's home] but it was a small town with no foot traffic. I looked at Shepherdstown, but at the time they had three bookstores. Now there's only one there.

"We bought the [Boonsboro] town house contingent on the town council's approval to use it for a business. Boonsboro was just starting to develop the downtown business district then, so they were all for a bookstore."

Wilder is now a member of the Boonsboro Downtown Development Association and the Hagerstown-Washington County Convention and Visitors' Bureau.

The area around Boonsboro growing rapidly with new housing developments.

"With so many young families moving in," Wilder says, "We sell more kids books now. In fact, we're selling more of everything.

"Most of the bookstore's customers are local residents living within a 15 mile radius. But every couple of weeks, we have a couple from somewhere else who are in the area and have heard of our store. The only problem is that a lot of people expect Nora to be here"

Copyright News for Business, Inc. Apr 2006
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved