Wessex Books & Records opened in December 1975 at 1083 El Camino, Menlo Park, with a beginning inventory of one hundred and fifty boxes, of books and three thousand vinyl LPs, and a staff of one. The very first sale was a hardcover novel by George Sand. The first record sale has been, forgotten. Nine years later, in desperate need of shelf space, the store moved a half-block to a much larger location at 558 Santa Cruz, across from where Keplers Books would move several years later. Quickly the stock grew to fill the new shop, at one point reaching nearly 100,000 books and records. Loyal customers came through the door from around the country and from across the oceans. Internet sales began in 1995; we shipped tens of thousands of books to every state and dozens of countries. Many great people worked with me at Wessex over the years; at last count, theyve written at least ten more books themselves. Thirty years of daily retail turned out to be my limit, however, and after no success at finding someone who could take over the business, Wessex began a liquidation sale, and closed on June 1. Only a single book remained unsold a bibliography of Anthony Burgess; the last book requested (unsuccessfully) by a customer was The Bridges of Madison County. Between the beginning and the end we unlocked the doors for business over ten thousand times, and redistributed more than a million books and almost a hundred thousand LPs. The support, loyalty, and hugely varied interests of customers were the life of the shop. You all made it thrive for thirty years; you brought wonderful books and records in, and others of you took them away again; every day you taught me something new about a book or a writer; every day you reaffirmed my founding and sustaining belief that an inventory based on quality rather than fashion would always, find patrons. So I am truly sorry that Wessex has reverted back to a fictional place. Finding a way to allow the bookstore to continue under someone elses ownership and direction was very important to me, but ironically, it turned out that an inventory that drew customers book-by-book had no buyers when offered whole. The role of the printed word is now very different than it was in 1975, or even in 1995. The place of books in peoples lives and in their homes has also changed radically: books havent been replaced by something better but rather displaced by other media, ignored because of demands on time and space, and passed by in favor of more-quickly digested media-bytes. Add to that the simple fact that the great majority of books for sale in all brick-and-mortar stores can be browsed (to say nothing of bought) on line at any moment of any day, and the attraction, as a practical matter, of any single aggregation of books, no matter how wonderful and unique and carefully selected, will just never again be what it was a few years ago. As a piece of technology the book can hardly be improved upon, but thats not the only chapter in the story, unfortunately. Yet its been a wonderful thirty years; Id do it all over again in a minute, though perhaps with a few changes along the way. Im looking forward to the next thirty.
Address: 558 Santa cruz Avenue, manio Park, CA 94025 USA
Telephone: 650-321-1333
Fax: 650-856-1984
Website: http://www.wessexbooks.com/