Turning a page
Founders ready to leave store that sells affordable used books
By Nancy Needham nancy@theacorn.com

BILL SPARKES/Acorn Newspapers NEW ARRIVALS- Jim Collins of Thousand Oaks hands used books to Denise Powell at the Book Bag, a nonprofit bookstore. The shop, which supports adult literacy programs at Conejo Valley Adult School, may have to close its doors Jan. 20.

Elementary schoolchildren packing $1 to buy a book may no longer find their destination open.

If no one comes forward to take over the nonprofit Book Bag bookstore at 202 N. Skyline Drive, its 10,000 volumes of used books will be discounted further and its doors will close on Jan. 20.

"I think it's terrible for the community. It's very, very sad for the children," said Judy Koch, Book Bag manager.

Founders of the bookstore, Jeanne Johnson and Melissa Cook, both of Thousand Oaks, wanted to offer residents a place where they could buy gently used, affordable books. They opened the Book Bag in May 2004.

Conejo Elementary School children who make regular field trips to the nearby bookstore have been able to buy a children's book for $1, have a story time experience and learn about bookstores. Girl Scout troops have made it a tradition to come to the store to do their holiday shopping, Koch said.

High school students could find copies of the classics they were assigned to read when other bookstores were out. It was common for grateful parents to bring those same books back to the Book Bag and re-donate them for the following year's students.

The bookstore's comfortable ambience also attracted adult readers looking for good deals on their favorite books. Adult paperbacks sell for $2, hardbacks for $5. All the books are donated and most look brand new.

To help the store raise money, the partners have sold some of the more valuable donated books on the Internet, using Amazon and other sites, but the process is very timeconsuming, according to Johnson.

Some of the books that didn't find their way to the wooden shelves of the Book Bag or into the large storage room in the back of the store have been donated to the Ventura County Jail. Others have been discounted and sold to Los Robles Hospital for their patient book cart program. And some, mostly children's books, have been given to the Grant Brimhall/Thousand Oaks Library.

"If someone wants to come forward and take over, the IRS would allow them to take up to $25,000 a year as a small salary if the store could support that," Johnson said.

Money made by the nonprofit after they paid all of their expenses for such things as rent, payroll and workers' compensation has come to about $2,000 a year, providing $1,000 each to the Many Mansions After School Program for children and the Adult School Literacy Program. Monthly expenses for the Book Bag total about $5,000, Johnson said.

On a Saturday morning late last month Carina Hastings of Thousand Oaks dropped off several boxes with about 80 brandnewlooking children's and other books inside to donate to the Book Bag. She said she had no idea the store might be closing.

"We read a lot and can afford to buy the books at full price. We know others can't, so we think this is a good place to donate them," Hastings said. "I think it is horrible, very sad, that such a good place that helps people might be closing."

Also at the bookstore was Newbury Park resident Kacy Butcher, a reading teacher at Los Cerritos Middle School in Thousand Oaks.

"I tell my students this is a place really close to the school where they can get books inexpensively," Butcher said.

Co-owner Cook, 55, is a mother of three with a full-time job as a management consultant. Johnson, 65, had previously retired from a full-time job and didn't realize opening the bookstore would be the same as working full-time again, she said.

"I really want to retire," Johnson said.