Help Lanora Achieve a Lifelong Dream

Hi, I'm Sarah. You may not know me, but you know my best friend Lanora, and I'm confident we already have one thing in common. Lanora knocks our socks off.

As you probably know, Lanora has been tirelessly researching and writing about an overlooked area in literary history: the pivotal role of bookstores and the booksellers who run them. Recently this effort led to an invitation to present her work at the 2nd Annual Bookselling Research Network Conference at the University of Reading (how appropriate!) on July 3rd and 4th.

When Lanora shared this news with me she wasn’t as excited as I would have expected her to be. After all, this is international recognition of the work she has been doing for hours every night once her actual workday is done - shouldn’t she be thrilled?

So I called her on it, and she admitted to me that with everything she has going on right now, she can’t afford to attend in person and that while she knows she can participate remotely, it’s not as exciting or rewarding as it would be to actually be at the conference, networking with others who can assist with and benefit from her work.

Immediately I thought, I can’t cover the cost of her attendance all on my own, but I could contribute toward it. I bet there are a lot of us out here who:

Love Lanora, and

Love helping others achieve their dreams

I’m hoping that describes you, and my guess is that it does. After all, people attract others who are like themselves, and I know Lanora to be kind, generous, and supportive. And although she gives to everyone she meets, she isn’t exactly the best at asking for help herself.

So I put this together. I hope you can join me in the front row, cheering Lanora on as she pursues a lifelong dream of becoming a writer and researcher, putting to use the books, ephemera, notes, and anecdotes she has been collecting for over 20 years to uncover and tell the story of bookstores and booksellers and their critical role in the spread of both cultural and social movements.

The Goal

Raise enough money for Lanora to attend the conference in person and bring Geoffrey along for morale and logistical support. (If we can’t raise enough for Geoffrey to attend, Lanora will be fine going on her own. #independentwoman )

We’d like to get Lanora there a few days early to adjust to the timezone difference so she is fresh and prepared to network with others and present her work. She will also get to attend informal events with other presenters and attendees at the conference and spend time visiting the University of Reading Archives.

The costs, in US Dollars, break down to:

Airfare for two: about $2500

Ground transportation to Reading and back: $100

6 nights in a hotel: between $700 and $1000

Food: approximately $250 (about $40 to $45 per day)

Total goal: $4000 all in.

So What is Lanora Doing Anyway?

If you are reading this, you probably already know what Lanora has been up to. If not, I am sure you know that Lanora has long dreamed of writing a book and/or doing her own research.

What you may not know is that for many years Lanora assumed that the time she could have pursued that dream had passed. She had chosen other dreams like being a mother to her beautiful daughter Elena, becoming part of the bookselling community, and marrying Geoffrey, the love of her life. And the truth is that Lanora is really happy with that. She has created a life full of books, cats, friends, and love.

But, as luck would have it, one day, she reviewed a proposal for a history of the bookstore that caused those old dreams to come roaring back into existence. The proposal had completely missed something Lanora knew to be critical - the unique role of the bookstore and booksellers in society. As she talked about what was missing in the proposal with her coworkers, friends, and family members, she repeatedly got the same response, "Lanora, you should write this book."

And then Lanora did an amazing and unusual thing - she went for it. She began conceptualizing and researching the book as she envisioned it. As she researched, she kept a spreadsheet of every bookstore she encountered. The list soon grew from hundreds to tens of thousands of listings. She added taxonomy which took it from a mere list to a data set that could be used to discover the answer to questions like:

How many woman-owned bookstores were there before 1900?

Which state can boast the most bookstores over its history?

What is the percentage increase or decrease in bookstores per decade?

This dataset, something Lanora assumed would be a niche topic appealing only to a select group, has proven to be anything but. Booksellers and scholars have responded with incredible enthusiasm, offering to help with research, data wrangling, or providing connections to other booksellers. The response has been so robust that Lanora has been invited to speak at the 2nd Annual Bookselling and Research Network Conference at the University of Reading, July 3rd-4th of 2023.

No one has ever attempted to put this dataset together before. There are datasets containing every book printed in Colonial America or on literacy rates, but nothing that tracks the impact of the bookstore.

About The Book

This is Lanora’s 30th year in bookselling. She has always loved reading, but beyond that, she loved the entire environment of the bookstore and the people who have dedicated their lives, despite the modest pay, to connecting readers with authors. This project is over 20 years in the making. All that time, Lanora was collecting books, ephemera, anecdotes, and more on bookstores themselves, never quite knowing what she would use it for, but knowing that she just loved this stuff.

Robert Darnton refers to bookshop owners as the “forgotten middlemen of literature.” The story of the American bookstore, the people who owned and operated them, and their collective influence on American culture has never been told.

Lanora’s narrative will show how America’s independent bookstores, and the people who dedicated their lives to them, created spaces that fostered cultural and social change in this country. She will argue that not only do independent booksellers have a cultural ethos and tradition that goes back over 150 years, but booksellers also used their bricks and mortar spaces with intention and, in doing so, have been instrumental in societal change and progress.

An informal ethnography of a place, the story follows the threads of connection from the early bookstores of the mid-19th Century to today. Each chapter is framed by a short interlude of personal memories, experiences, and reflections by Lanora about her experiences in bookselling and how the lessons she learned as a bookseller impacted her own life.