My trip to One Dollar Books, downtown City Place’s newest addition and Long Beach’s newest discount books store.
It had only been open for a week the first time I went there, just to check it out, and it looked like quite a mess. Understandably, since stocking and organizing a bookstore must be an overwhelming task. Tags on the shelf that read “Fiction” and “Biographies” were more like suggestions than sections, as titles were strewn about with loose regard for genre.
But Piccolo Lewis and Jesse Pelayo know what they’re doing, this being the fourth such store in the Southland. Lewis opened the first three in Lakewood, Burbank and Orange County, and Pelayo has been brought on to run the fourth – on Fifth Street, across from the City Place Wal-Mart.
I took refuge in the archaic National Geographics near the back corner of One Dollar Books, delving into the search for the Anaconda, and what robots will look like when 1993 comes. This was my sanctuary, which is the quality that many book-hunters hold dear and the one that many lost when the iconic Acres Of Books closed its doors for good not three blocks from here. Pelayo is helping to fill a much-needed void in Long Beach (and the hearts of local readers), and he didn’t even know it.
“I didn’t even know they went out of business!” he exclaims while stocking shelves, on my second trip to One Dollar Books, a week later. Now, the store is beginning to take shape. Most of the titles are where they should be, but it’s getting hard when books are flying off the shelves and new ones have to be shipped in constantly.
Pelayo estimates that about 1,000 books are sold per day – which, yes, means about $1,000 of revenue a day. And before you ask, yes, all of the books in the store are really $1 each. You wouldn’t believe how many people come into the store asking, “Which books are for one dollar?”
Most of those people, and all customers in general, are just passing by the store and get drawn in by the allure of a bargain. Those are the two best things going for One Dollar Books right now: crowds of shoppers and the shock factor.
“We depend on foot traffic,” Pelayo says. But as more and more literature lovers discover the shop, he hopes the crowds will begin to come in on purpose, and not accident. Though the location was recently vacated by a plus-size women’s clothing boutique, and then temporarily leased by a Halloween costume shop, One Dollar Books is in it for the long haul.
They worked out a reduced rate deal with the landlord and flung open the doors as soon as they could dump the books inside. The stock comes from a Los Angeles warehouse that keeps more than half-a-million books ready to be shipped to any of the four locations. With all of the books coming from either donations, publishers who over-print or overstocked libraries, there are no product costs.
“Books really are expensive and I don’t think they should be,” says Pelayo, a social studies and computer science teacher at Franklin High School in Los Angeles. He took a three-month leave to open the store, but hasn’t left his teaching roots behind.
“Promoting literacy is our goal, really,” he says. “I see kids that are in 12th grade and still can’t read.”
There are gems to be found. I snatched up a window copy of The Da Vinci Code, which I’ve wanted since I foolishly let a dormmate borrow my copy as a CSULB freshman (never saw that kid again). From the non-fiction section, The Best American Sportswriting 2005 jumped out at me. And perusing fiction titles from Crichton and Grisham, I found The Andromeda Strain and a double-box that included The Firm and A Time To Kill (it counted as one book!) Total cost for those treasures: Four bucks.
But I left the best deal for someone else to find. A book titled How To Make $25,000 A Year With Your Camera, which by my estimates would provide a 25,000% return on investment. In just one year!
“I get a lot of people coming in and thanking me,” Pelayo says. “I think we’re really onto something here.”
By Ryan ZumMallen, Managing Editor