The torch has been passed. A page has been turned. Choose your cliché.
After 43 years in the former Chrysler dealership at 2394 9th St. N., Wilson’s Book World is leaving. Starting a new chapter, if you like.
Wilson’s was, and will remain, a family affair. Owner, operator and chief bottle-washer Jeff Morris bought the business from his mother, Helen Wilson, in 1988. There’s a separately owned antique store next door.
Jeff was there at the beginning, a precocious junior high kid, when his mom first purchased the place back in ’71 (it was in a different, smaller location for the first three years).
Now, at 56, he’s selling the oddly-designed landmark building and handing the store’s contents (200,000-plus books) — and the business itself — to his daughter, Michelle Jenquin.
“What I’m going to miss most, I’ll probably hang around and keep doing for her, for free: The book-buying,” says the chatty and likeable Morris. “It’s my favorite part of the job. Every day’s Christmas.
“I forget who said it, but 80 percent of everything is crap. And that’s true. But it’s that 20 percent …”
Wilson’s trades in entirely in used books. And collectible comics. And in rare, antiquarian titles (Morris is a past president of the Florida Antiquarian Booksellers Association).
It hasn’t always been easy, surviving (and thriving) as an independent.
“I’d watched my new book business do a three-year death spiral when Barnes and Noble came into town,” Morris explains. “When it’s a new, shiny toy, and people only have X amount of dollars to spend on books that month, that’s where they’re going to go," he says. “So I had to make the decision of getting rid of new books. And it turned out it was the smartest decision I could ever have made. You have to have new books to have used books.”
These days, he adds, “When people ask me why I only sell used books, I tell them ‘There’s nothing I can do that Barnes and Noble can’t do bigger, better, faster and cheaper.’ You’ve got to pick your battles. And, as an extra bonus, there are more books out of print than in print. So my field is bigger.”
Morris says he’s never felt like he was in competition with Haslam’s, the center of St. Petersburg’s bookselling universe since 1933.
According to Morris, Charlie Haslam encouraged Helen Wilson — a book lover who had no previous retail experience — to start her business. “He said ‘St. Pete could use another book store.’”
Discourse — literary, political or otherwise – has always been welcome in Morris’ store. Like an old-time barber shop, people would drop by just to talk with the proprietor and anyone else who felt like participating.
Sometimes it got heated, but it was always civil. Observes Morris: “The good part about retail, when it’s books, is that to walk through the front door, you’ve got to be able to read. That whittles away a lot of the Neanderthals right there.”
Jenquin intends to make few changes to the store’s setup, or the atmosphere, when the new Wilson’s — at 535 16th St. N. — opens (hopefully by Jan. 1). “It’s the former P&M Lighting Building,” she explains, “and it’s got the same kind of feel as this building does, the old art deco-ish kind of feel. And that was important to me. I didn’t want to go into a strip center with a Publix and a Starbucks.”
“The good part about retail, when it’s books, is that to walk through the front door, you’ve got to be able to read. That whittles away a lot of the Neanderthals right there.”
Except for his book-buying visits, there’ll be no interference from Dad.
“I took it in one direction from my mom — it’s subtle —and I’m sure she’ll take it in another direction,” Morris says.
Retiring at 56, of course, isn’t unheard of, although it’s not exactly commonplace.
Leaving a business he helped build from the ground up, explains Morris, is a double-edged sword. For one thing, he absolutely despises insurance company hassles.
“And I’m tired of being a landlord,” he says “I’m a terrible landlord. I’m too nice a guy. I got tired of seeing how many balls I could keep in the air at one time. It was a juggling act — and that was the thing that was just soul-sucking.
“I could sell books until I dropped dead," he adds. "I love that part of it.”
This article appears in Dec 7-14, 2017.