Store carries an estimated 15,000 titles; those titles not in stock can be ordered
By Mike Lammi
Livingston County | Daily Press & Argus (Howell)
GENOA TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — A new chapter has begun for book lovers in Livingston County.
And it’s being written by Penny Coleman and Robert Vedro.
Disappointed by a lack of bookstores in the area and eager to fill that void, Coleman and Vedro last month opened Blue Frog Books in the Grand River Plaza in Genoa Township, according to the Livingston County Daily Press & Argus.
Coleman said she was emboldened after the closures in the past few years of brick-and-mortar bookstores such as Aria Booksellers in Howell and Borders Books in Brighton.
“It’s a risk; it absolutely is,” Coleman said of opening a bookstore. “But it’s a risk I’m more than willing to take to try to get that bookstore back in the community so people can have a place to go and find a book rather than just (buying it online). There’s so much more to the book-buying process than just clicking ‘buy.’ “
Coleman, a pharmacist by trade and a book lover who counts Diana Gabaldon as her favorite author, said opening Blue Frog Books is a dream come true.
“People who dream, they usually dream about doing something and it goes away,” she said. “But this dream wasn’t going away.”
When Borders in Brighton closed in 2011, Coleman and Vedro purchased dozens of bookcases in the liquidation sale in the hopes that someday they would actually open their store. Two years ago, Coleman attended an American Booksellers Association training school in Florida for people who want to open an independent bookstore.
“There was a surprising number of people there from all around the country. Like-minded people who realize the value of a book and what a bookstore can do for a community,” she said.
Vedro, who is Coleman’s brother-in-law, said he still needed to be convinced.
“Me being a numbers guy, I made her take me to New York to a book convention, and I was just amazed with the passion book readers have for their stories, for their authors,” he said. “So I really think there is a need here, and we just want to fill that need.”
Coleman estimates Blue Frog has at least 15,000 books available, and titles that are not in stock can be ordered and usually shipped to the store the next day from its wholesale supplier’s Indiana warehouse.
The store stocks titles for kids and adults in all of the popular genres, from mystery and nonfiction to religion and history to classics and how-to.
Among the new releases is the children’s book “Daisy & Josephine,” written by Howell’s famous new resident, actress Melissa Gilbert.
“We tried to come up with a general all-around bookstore with something for everyone,” said Vedro, a fan of instructional books and classics such as J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye.”
Blue Frog Books is also a place to go to have photos scanned, enlarged, restored or mounted. Vedro has many years of experience in the photo industry and said combining his skills with Coleman’s passion for books made sense.
“Photos are kind of like a books, since each one has its own story,” he said. “And there really is no place to do photos anymore either. So we kind of melded our two things. We decided that the two could come together, and we could really create one business that could thrive.”
Some of Vedro’s large prints are displayed on the walls at Blue Frog.
At the rear of the store is an area with tables and chairs where shoppers or groups can read or talk over a cup of complimentary coffee.
Coleman said there is one drawback to owning her dream business.
“You open a bookstore and all of a sudden, you don’t have time to read,” she said with a laugh. “When I’m unboxing books, it’s taking twice as long as it should because I’m reading the jackets and saying, ‘Oh, I wish I could read this one.’ But I don’t have time.”
