Ann Patchett

The two major bookstores in Nashville closed, and after waiting around for someone else to open a bookstore, I decided to do it myself.

This was not the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.

It was more like irritation.

People love to tell me that bookstores are dead, that books themselves are hobbling towards the dust heap of cultural irrelevance.

Heresy, I say.

Books are the rock on which I built my church.

Like the Hare Krishna, I didn't do this because of what I needed.

I had books.

I would always have books.

I fought for books because you need them.

The summer before we opened Parnassus Books, I went on tour.

I've been going on tour regularly since 1992.

This one, for a novel I wrote called State of Wonder, was going to be my fact-finding mission.

I collected information from all the booksellers I knew, but the most valuable came from my friend Daniel Golden at Boswell Books in Milwaukee.

He told me people were desperate to buy anything that was hanging from the ceiling, which is true.

More importantly, he told me to put the children's section as far away from the front door as possible so that when a child makes a break for it, you have the maximum opportunity to catch her.

Daniel talked a lot about the children's section, which was not a part of bookstores I knew much about.

If you want customers, he said, you have to raise them yourself.

That made sense.

Small children coming to story time, being read to, learning to read themselves, will grow up to be great customers.