Last month, I sat down for a chat with Augie Aleksy, owner of Centuries & Sleuths bookstore in Forest Park, IL. Augie and his store have become an institution in the greater Chicago area over the past couple of decades, especially in the local mystery community. DPG: What made you decide to get into the book business, and why history and mystery? AA: I always wanted to run a bookstore ... I worked in banking, this was in the late '80s. I was laid off, and my wife Tracy got me copy of What Color Is Your Parachute. I read it and thought, "Why not?" I already had an MA in Business Administration, so I knew how to put together a business plan. Tracy and I talked about it, the impact of switching careers and all ... I was making a fair amount of money in banking, and we knew running a bookstore was likely to be very different. It's kind of like being an author-you're ceding control to another person. I was realistic enough to know I had to check the market out first, so I did things like I went to the Oak Park library and checked circulation numbers for history and mystery. They were pretty high. Then I did this half-day session downtown, a marketing thing in September or October, this was 1989. It was mostly marketing people from the North Side and the suburbs, and they recommended doing a survey of what people were buying. The idea was to cover three months, including Christmas shoppers. So I did that; I sent out a 3,000-piece mailing to Oak Park and River Forest [the two closest suburbs to Forest Park], and each piece had a quarter in it. You know, give people a little something to do the survey. I got a lot of response, and the funny thing was that some people sent the quarter back. They said, "If you're opening a bookstore, you'll need the money more than I do." DPG: In a time when brick-and-mortar bookstores-especially independents-are suffering, and online giants like Amazon seem poised to drive physical bookstores out of existence, what does a place like Centuries & Sleuths offer that Amazon and others can't? AA: Really, a personal connection. Like sometimes, people come up and ask, "I need a gift for So-and-so," maybe a friend or a relative. So you have to be kind of like a doctor, asking questions: where did the person grow up, what did they read in the past, that kind of thing. And then you can help the customer out. That's the fun part, helping people. You kind of put things in priorities-what's going to keep me around. If a customer comes to me with a question, then that's my priority. My son was nine when we made the decision [to open C&S], and he would brag about this store, try to sell books to his teachers. Bookselling isn't a job-it's a lifestyle. DPG: As part of that, you do a lot of things besides just sell books. Give us a rundown of the kinds of events you hold at Centuries & Sleuths, and how they got started. AA: We host book groups, author signings, also history discussion groups and dead-author chats. People pay for it-the author chats used to be free, but when we started charging ten dollars, you'd be amazed how attendance perked up. History is my forte... I've started to lead some of the discussion groups. It's so interesting, finding out good things about people in history you didn't know about before... discussion groups are great ways of shaping what you get out of a book. Author signings are great, of course, because people tend to buy books. Depending on the author, those can be a big draw. One woman came all the way from Ireland to see Andrew Vachss. We also just had a signing for Lori Andrews, her book on social media [I Know Who You Are And I Saw What You Did], which was well attended. That was with Sisters in Crime. Sisters in Crime and MWA [Mystery Writers of America] hold meetings here, and I give them the space free because they buy books. It can go the other way, though. For example, I also host the G.K. Chesterton Society, and they pay $65 to rent the space because they don't buy books. Sometimes I've run out, too. Penguin arranged a signing for Clare O'Donohue, and I bought fifteen copies of her book. But her entire high-school class came, and they all wanted one ... The nice thing was, they ordered the extra books from me. Clare was gracious enough to come back and sign them when they came in. DPG: Centuries & Sleuths won the Raven Award in April 2010-meaning it was honored as that year's best independent bookstore. What was that like? AA: It was such a great weekend. People from Mystery Writers of America were so gracious, they really made you feel like a big shot ... Sara [Paretsky]'s Grand Master Award went to her in that same year, and she and I were joking, "Chicago's taken New York by storm!" Customers sometimes bring in their families and show them the Raven. It attracts people. DPG: Were you expecting the Raven? AA: I had no idea. A couple months later, at the Printers' Row dinner in June, I asked Tony Perona-he was the MWA President then-how they pick the winner. He gave me this deadpan look and said, "I can't tell you." DPG: You've become a fixture in the Chicagoland mystery community, showcasing authors and offering meeting space for local chapters of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. What has that partnership been like? AA: Really good. That's the unique thing-the camaraderie with mystery authors, how much they support each other. Sara [Paretsky] has been such a loyal author, and others are, too. Like I said before, people from MWA and Sisters in Crime usually buy books when they come for meetings or signings. Sisters in Crime also runs email blasts for their members, which are good PR for Centuries & Sleuths. It's so entertaining, the stories you hear from authors. Their experiences about people, where they get their ideas... You don't read a book in a cave, usually. You like the style, you like the subject matter, people want to talk about it.
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Lee Goldberg
Those Were the Days Radio Players Return to LIM
If you could invite any characters from the mystery/thriller, romantic suspense or paranormal genres to a Halloween party, who would be on your guest list, and why?
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