BOOKS MAKE AGREEABLE FRIENDS

Jackie Anderson has owned and operated Metro News Book Store with her husband Myron at 415 Broadway for 36 years. The store was formerly known as Strom's News Agency.

LaMar Johnson, music department manager at Hastings Books Music & Video, Inc., explained the Books in Print Computer to customer Linda Maddox. The computer can find books by subject, author and title and lists the number of books published by an author.

Book, as many millions of readers will attest, make agreeable friends.

There is no better time to renew that friendship during January, when the hubbub of Christmas and New Year's have passed and reflections turn to new beginnings.

People are buying books in record numbers.

The U.S. Department of Commerce noted that sales of books were up more than 50 percent during the five-year period from 1987 to 1992, from $5.1 billion to $8 billion. And sales topped $9.6 billion in 1994.

Circulation figures at the Cape Girardeau Public Library are another indicator of increased readership. A check shows that circulation is about 19,000 items a month, which translates into almost 230,000 items a year. One survey, about five years ago, indicated that more than half of the people living in Cape Girardeau used the local library.

A book industry study group, the NPD Group, provides some interesting statistics on sales of books.

Although children 13 and under make up only 20 percent of the population, juvenile books account for 41 percent of all books purchased.

Women outpace men at the nation's bookstores. They purchase 58 percent of paperbacks and hardback books sold.

Forty-one percent of book buyers will not pay more than $4.95 for a book. Another 41 percent will pay between $5 and $14.95. The remaining 18 percent will pay from $14 up for single books.

More than 25 percent of all readers like mystery thrillers in books. Eleven percent favor romances. From there, readers look to history, biographies, religion, how-to books and other topics.

People's reading habits while flying vary, with 56 percent thumbing through airline magazines available on planes. However, more than 40 percent of flyers take a book on the flight.

There are currently 1.71 book stores per 10,000 households in the nation, ranging from the spacious Barnes & Noble and Hastings to the small one-operator stores featuring new and used publications.

During the five-year span covered in the USDC's Census of Retail Trade report, the number of stores increased in the U.S., from 11,076 in 1987 to 12,887 in 1992, up 16.4 percent.

During the past year in Cape Girardeau, the book market received a big boost with the addition of two large chain stores -- Barnes & Noble Inc., the nation's largest bookseller with more than 260 stores, and Hastings Books, Music & Video, which has more than 100 stores nationwide.

The two giant book sellers -- they occupy more than 20,000 square feet each --join a market that already includes Waldenbooks at West Park Mall; Metro News Book Store, 415 Broadway; Sibley's Bargain Books, 33 N. Main; Southeast Bookstore on Southeast Missouri State University campus, and a number of Christian bookstores -- The Gospeland Book Store-The Parable Group in West Park Mall, Living Water Books and Gifts, 1416 N. Kingshighway, and The Way Christian Book Store, at Jackson.

In addition, there are a number of used-book outlets here.

Hastings occupies more than 22,000 square feet in the Town Plaza Shopping Center. Books occupy a third of the space at Hastings.

"We have more than 35,000 titles," said Victor Javenes, book manager at the store.

Hastings also offers a wide selection of music, greeting cards, posters and videos for rent and sale. The store is open seven days a week, from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Hastings is headquartered in Amarillo, Texas. The company has three other stores in Missouri -- at Joplin, Jefferson City and Springfield.

Barnes & Noble, located at 3035 William, is also open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m.

The 22,000-square-foot store features a cafe that serves coffee, espresso, sodas, pastries and other dessert items. Barnes & Noble stores typically carry from 100,000 to 150,000 titles.

"We're in that category," said Russ Middleton, general manager of the store here.

In keeping with the national trend, the local Barnes & Noble store sells heavily from its children's department.

"Juvenile books top the sales list," said Middleton, "but general fiction, especially mysteries and science fiction, have been good here."

Barnes & Noble operates more than 260 stores under the name of Barnes & Noble, Bookstop and Bookstar. It also has 700 mall stores under the names B. Dalton Bookseller, Doubleday Book Shops and Scribners Bookstores.

Metro News, 4333 Broadway in downtown Cape Girardeau, is the veteran of book sellers in Cape Girardeau.

Myron and Jacqueline Anderson acquired the store in 1959 from Ed Baker, who had purchased Strom's Metro News a year earlier.

"There were only a couple of racks of books then," said Myron Anderson. "We added more paperbacks and some hardbacks to the operation."

The paperback market was big then, noted Anderson. "We didn't do much with hardback books. Now we have a good selection of all types of books."

Waldenbooks was the first chain operation in Cape Girardeau, and was one of the original stores in West Park Mall.