A local bookstore has reopened its doors.
Read Again Book Exchange, located at 123 W. Valley St. in Granby (U.S. 60), officially reopened on Aug. 11.
“I had it for three years,” said owner Dorothy Cliff. “I opened in July 2006 and closed it down the first day of June, 2009.”
She moved to Colorado and recently has returned to the area.
“I kept the store knowing that one day I would come back,” she said. “I just did not know that it would be this soon. When I sold out, I sold everything but the shelves. I had a big sale. I sold all of my books, and then I donated about 3,000 books to Fairview Library. I thought, by the time I come back, they (books) will be old and musty, and I can’t keep them in the building, it would just be bad.”
What the library couldn’t use was donated to Crosslines in Carthage and Neosho.
Cliff said she and her husband, were homesick and decided to move back in the area. They purchased a house in Neosho.
But as she had sold her previous stock, she had to purchase some more books to get started again.
“I ended up buying the bulk of books from a bookstore in Joplin,” Cliff said. “I bought 1,000 books to get me started and then books that I have been accumulating. My shop is not real full yet, but it is getting there. I have had real good response so far as some of my old customers have seen that I am open and they have been popping in, some have been bringing me big boxes of books.”
This time around, she is doing something different.
“If you bring me a good book, you get 60 cents credit and you spend it however you want,” Cliff said. “I am being careful and not pricing anything over. I have almost nothing that is over $4. Some paperbacks are $10 now and I am pricing them at $4. I price half of the cover price if they are good books and good condition.”
Cliff does have some hardback books.
“I try to avoid hardbacks, I want to stick with paperbacks, but if someone brings me a really good author that will resell, I will take the hardback, but I treat them like a paperback,” she said.
Books range from inspirational to children to mystery to fiction to romance to horror/thriller to sci-fi to westerns.
Thus far, Cliff said she has around 2,000 books in the store.
“I really enjoy doing it, the book business,” she said. “I love books and love to recycle.”
Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Friday. The phone number is 312-0956.
