New Bookstore Fills Unique Niche
Posted by Mariko Fujinaka in Bookselling book design books trends on September 3, 2010
It’s supposed to be a bad economic climate for brick-and-mortar bookstores, and it seems booksellers are closing their doors left and right. It might come as a surprise, then, to hear about the opening of a new bookstore, one funded by the federal government. The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), responsible for all sorts of government publications since 1861, recently opened a retail bookstore in Washington, D.C. The store is actually a reopening of sorts, since a GPO bookstore has been in existence since 1895. The new store was redesigned to mimicĀ more closely contemporary booksellers. The redesign and renovation were handled in-house by GPO employees.
If you don’t live in D.C., you can always order books online. The GPO bookstore offers thousands of titles that cover a vast array of subjects, everything from the history of the United States to national parksĀ and technical manuals. To illustrate the diversity of the bookstore’s collection, here are the top five best sellers from July 2010.
1. Federal Benefits for Veterans, Dependents and Survivors, 2010
2. Reports of the United States Tax Court, Volume 131, July 1, 2008, to December 31, 2008
3. Civics Flash Cards for the Naturalization Test, 2009
4. Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories, 2009
5. International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis as Approved by the World Health Organization, 2007
Also in keeping with modern times, the GPO has a Twitter feed as well as a blog.
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