Edward's Books to close

By Mike Mcauliffe

05/05/2008- The Republican

SPRINGFIELD - For more than 20 years, Michael J. Foley has come to Edwards Books when he is in Springfield. This weekend, the fact so many shelves are bare leaves no mystery as to what is happening.

"I'm going to miss this place terribly," Foley said yesterday, the day after owner Janet M. Edwards announced she will be closing the Tower Square shop May 16.

Foley, a Cumberland Foreside, Maine, resident who reads three to five books a week and says his metier is finding bookstores, described Edwards Books as "the definitive independent bookstore."
"They should receive subsidies from the government, not the oil companies," Foley said of independent booksellers. "Books are life."

But Edwards Books, which began in 1974 in the Fairfield Mall in Chicopee and occupied several locations in Tower Square since 1982, could not overcome the confluence of competitive forces that include giant chains like Barnes & Noble, the Internet, and the press of daily life that has led more readers to turn to sites like amazon.com to order books.

"It's a change in the landscape of bookselling," Edwards said. "Fifty percent of the independent bookstores across this country have closed in the last 10 years."

Edwards' was a place where new and established writers would give readings, but it was also a place where the music-loving owner sponsored birthday celebrations to honor Bob Dylan and Neil Young; a place where children would come in and learn to use the cash register and then ring up their own purchases; a place where if a customer accepted a book recommendation from Edwards and didn't like the read, he or she could bring it back for a refund. Returns were about as rare as sightings of J.D. Salinger.

The store was also featured in a book by Palmer author Suzanne Strempek Shea: "Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama and Other Page-Turning Adventures From a Year in a Bookstore." Published in 2004, "Shelf Life" chronicled a year Strempek Shea spent working part-time at the bookshop following a battle with breast cancer.

Strempek Shea, who has stayed on at the store, described the bookshop as a kind of community center, and she remembered how it became a gathering place one fateful day in September 2001.

"On 9/11 people just came in and stood around and we couldn't even get radio reception in there," she said.

"I kind of feel like...someone's death has been announced," Strempek Shea said of the impending closure.

For Edwards, however, there is no gnashing of teeth over the demise of the bookstore.

"It was a blast," she said. "It was a blast. (A) serious blast."