For Children's Bookstore, an Unhappy End
A Likely Story, Beloved by Families, Faces Fiscal Reality

By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 6, 2007

In 2006, A Likely Story, the beloved Old Town children's bookstore, won the industry's prestigious Pannell Award and was voted the most outstanding children's bookstore in the nation. For two decades, the bookstore, and especially its children's story time, were fixtures in the lives of many families.

The shop hosted midnight Harry Potter parties, which thousands attended. Its owners were prime forces behind such community events as this year's Tricks and Treats on Halloween. They donated to school fundraisers, hosted birthday parties, organized writers' workshops for children and held summer camps.

On Nov. 21, A Likely Story hosted a deeply discounted "thank you" sale and closed its doors forever.

The news took many by surprise. On Nov. 26, parent Sarah Clements stood in front of the darkened store, with 8-month-old Sean bundled into a stroller and 2-year-old Andrew looking forlornly through the glass front doors. On each side of the teal blue doors was the familiar stencil of a child and teddy bear sitting beside a dollhouse, engrossed in books. Inside, a single light shone on the bright yellow, polka-dotted walls. Bookshelves that had once been filled with every kind of story and picture book imaginable were empty; some bookshelves had been dismantled. The three had come for the shop's 11 a.m. story time, as they had regularly for much of the year.

"That's sad, Mommy," Andrew said, his face pressed to the glass. "That's sad."

"Story time here was great," Clements said. "It was really fast paced and high energy. They'd read a story, then stop and sing a song. It was very easy to hold [the children's] attention, which is not usually an easy thing to do. I think a lot of people will miss this place."

A few minutes later, three nannies strolled up with their charges. "This is such a shock," Ilia Asto said.

Penny Andrews came by with 10-month-old Charlotte. "This is the first time I've ever made it, and now it's closed," she said. She read the sign posted on the front door: "Like any great story, ours has come to an end. After 23 years in business, we have closed our doors for the final time. We greatly thank you for your patronage and the wonderful memories that we will have to carry with us into our futures. You have made our two decades plus in business as magical as any story that we have ever had on our shelves."

The owners had decided that the numbers just didn't add up.

For days, other independent business owners along King Street buzzed with the news. No one could believe it. "They had a sign up that they were remodeling just one month ago, and now they're closed?" said Lynn Mills of Tisara Photography.

The owners of A Likely Story had been instrumental in revitalizing upper King Street, she said, encouraging specialty retail stores and entrepreneurs to locate in the area that had traditionally been known for residential and office space. "It's possible that the revitalization had an adverse effect on this small business, because rents keep going up."

News of the store's closing first came in an e-mail to customers, sent at 3:22 on the morning it was to close. No explanation was given. "Oh no! It can't be true!" read one post on a neighborhood blog. Many wrote how they loved the store's story time but admitted that they rarely bought books afterward. Maybe that's why it was closing, wrote another.

They weren't far off.

'A Magical Place'

For years, A Likely Story had been owned by former teacher Marilyn Dugan. Five years ago, Dugan decided it was time to retire. Dinah Paul had been working at the shop and had fallen in love with it, so she and her husband decided to buy it.

Paul and her dog, Finnegan, were fixtures at the store, customers said. Coming into the shop was like walking into your grandmother's living room, they said, and Paul was tireless in organizing events and promoting the store. She appeared on local TV and radio programs with suggested reading lists. She wrote holiday gift lists and book reviews for local newspapers. She organized "Just Me and My Dad" story times on Saturdays. Her crowning achievement, in addition to the Pannell Award, however, may have come in the summer when she persuaded all of King Street to transform itself into Diagon Alley and hosted an enormous Harry Potter bash when the seventh and final book came out.

"She was a real visionary," said Lorraine Keir, a friend and neighbor who sometimes worked at the shop. "It was a wonderful place for little kids. People felt comfortable coming. . . . Rainy days, snowy days, there was always such a crowd. It was a great place for moms to meet other moms." If children came into the store and read a book, Paul gave them one for free. "It was really a magical place."

Susan Newell and her five children were regular visitors to the store.

"It was the best children's bookstore I ever went to. It was just something you felt," she said. "You walked in the door and you felt very welcomed, whether you had a quiet child or a screaming child. And they were very focused on books. You felt they had handpicked the special books that they wanted to display. We loved the store and loved what they did, and they obviously loved their clientele. But obviously, we didn't do enough to support the bookstore, and I'm saddened by that."

Paul said that deciding to close the store was the hardest decision she has made. "People loved us, but they didn't equate loving us to buying from us," she said last week, standing in the kitchen of her Rosemont home, feeding 11-month-old daughter Sabrina. "When we finally looked at all the bills coming in and saw how it would never match the cash flow, that's when we decided to sell."

She and her husband made the decision to sell just about a week before they actually did, and they waited until Nov. 19 to tell their staff. It just didn't make sense to stay open through Christmas, normally a busy season, she said. "Cash was so tight that we wouldn't have been able to ramp up for the holidays. And our selection was already so thin," she said. "I didn't want to go down like that. So we decided to call it what it is and end it and not struggle through another month."

Paul said that although she could organize events in her sleep, running the business end was a struggle. When she and her husband, Joshua, bought the store, it was operating in the black. But they thought that with new energy, they would be able to increase the number of buyers and draw new families to the shop. That never happened, she said.

"We had the best six months in the store's history and the worst six months," she said. "And we never understood why. We could never figure out what that secret formula was."

For example, people loved story time, she said, but many never stayed to buy books. "In fact, books got damaged," she said. "So story time ended up costing us." And although thousands came to the Harry Potter event, she had bought only 300 copies, mainly because she had overstocked Harry Potter books in the past. "I never required people to buy from us to participate in our events," she said. "I don't know if that's me being naive and gullible, but I thought that by creating this magical place, people would come. And they didn't."

Little Room Left

Stephanie Landrum, senior vice president with the public-private Alexandria Economic Development Partnership, said someone from her office had stopped by the store Nov. 21 to see whether the group could help A Likely Story stay open.

Paul said she appreciated the gesture. "We did get offers of help, but it was too far gone for my husband and I," Paul said. "Maybe by not having A Likely Story around for a while, when a children's bookstore does come back, maybe people will appreciate it more. Actions have to be behind words."

Landrum said that in the past year, 10 small businesses in Alexandria have closed. Some, such as the Cash Grocer on King Street or a piano store on N. St. Asaph Street, closed because the owners wanted to retire. Others, like the ReMix in Del Ray, relocated. With a hotel slated to go up across the street from A Likely Story, Landrum said she isn't sure what kind of business might want to locate there. "Another bookstore?" she said. "Who knows. But the odds are slim. Independent booksellers are few and far between."

Kristen McLean, executive director of the Association of Booksellers for Children, where, until recently, Paul served as treasurer on the board of directors, said independent bookstores have had it rough in the era of chains, big-box stores and discount online retailers. When the association was founded in 1984, there were three times as many independent bookstores specializing in children's books, McLean said.

"Independent bookselling has the narrowest margin of any industry outside perishables. A good bookstore doing its job will be lucky to make 3 percent a year net profit," she said. "Many bookstores who don't watch their numbers very carefully can easily flip into the red. Booksellers are squeezed. They don't have any room for error."

A New Chapter

With Sabrina fed, Paul picked up the latest book she's reading: "The Castle Corona," by Sharon Creech. "It's a fairy tale," she said. "Good escape." She just bought "Counting Christmas" and "Skippyjon Jones" to read to her daughter. If she has learned anything from this experience, she said, it's that she is passionate about books, independent business and children. What she'll do with that, she said, is something she'll have to figure out.

On her wall hangs a hand-painted sign: "Home Is Where Your Story Begins."

On her coffee table, a card: "Don't Look Back."