Questions for Lynne Wright, Coastal Reading Expert

April 20, 2011

Next time you’re visiting the Oregon Coast Aquarium, stop by the Hatfield Marine Science Center Bookstore and meet Lynne Wright, who’s been managing the bright and cozy store for ten years. Wright has filled the 490 square-foot space with a great range of beach-related gifts and guides and nonfiction—from the useful to the offbeat—for kids, science lovers and novices, tourists and grandparents. Ask her for a recommendation, and you’re in the presence of one of Oregon’s foremost experts on Coastal reading.

Wright began her bookselling career as assistant manager of a Waldenbooks in Michigan in 1980 and eventually worked for the Borders brothers (Louis and Tommy!) as their floor manager at their second independent bookstore. When the brothers sold their operation to a corporation, Wright, a die-hard independent bookseller, moved out to the Pacific Northwest and has worked in the region since.

Hatfield is a self-sustaining non-profit bookstore, owned by Oregon State University and operated by Oregon Sea Grant. Wright describes is as “a hybrid of all of my favorite interests rolled into the bookstore and science environment.”

We asked her a few questions.

What are some of the challenges associated with being a bookstore located in a marine science center?

By far, the financial aspect of being a bookstore that does most of its business June through August, and then faces nine months of fairly quiet visitor activity. It’s a challenge I struggle with each year. In my ‘other’ past life with the private business of bookselling, I loved having regular customers who I could advertise to and look forward to seeing regularly. Here, I am dependent on the visitors that come into the doors to visit our marine science center, and don’t see as much of a regular returning loyal customer base. As a non-profit, I can’t just advertise the store and what we have (I bet you didn’t know that!). I have to advertise the science center and may only mention that they should visit our bookstore when they are here. There is also something called the UBIT tax code that requires that nonprofit stores purchase within their mission statement, which was a whole surprise challenge for me when I arrived.

Along with the challenges, there are many delights, and I love working in the environment of science and research. Every week is some new discovery for me about our world, and the research that connects us to it. I feel very fortunate that fate brought me to this lovely town on the mid-Oregon coast!

You sell a lot of gift items. What are some of your best-sellers? About forty percent or more of my store is non-book merchandise. Our store supports the educational mission of the marine science center, so I consider the books the heart of the store, but the other inventory items support and compliment them. Microscopes, bug bottles, logo clothing, posters, toy replicas, plush, cards, educational games, and stationary items are some of my bestsellers outside of the books. I had only ordered books in past positions, so locating good vendors and finding merchandise that would compliment the books and add to the whole educational experience was a steep yet interesting learning curve for me. It is a whole different buying language than books!

I was dead-set against carrying plush (Hey, I’m a bookseller at heart!) but finally found a couple of companies that have good quality and affordable merchandise that realistically reflect animals that we have in the center—such as octopuses—and they sell amazingly well. The non-book items are a great companion to the books we have, and they work together as a total theme. Our center’s octopus logo clothing items are also popular. Bug bottles and fossil shark teeth are the other bestsellers.

Books still hold their own here, since I have a wide variety of marine science and practical identification field guides for birding, walking the beaches, northwest animals, marine mammals, plants and geology. Folks come from distant parts of the globe to visit the area and stop by to purchase and browse from the concentrated natural world and science books that we stock here.

What have you read recently that you want to press into the hands of your customers? I just finished an amazing book that is not only timely, but is also extremely well-written and engaging. It’s The Power of the Sea by Bruce Parker. I am very lucky to have this author coming next month to do a presentation on the subject and a book signing. This book was published last November, and it tackles the science of tsunamis, storm surges, and our human quest to predict disaster. The author is an expert on the subject, and he has the rare talent to make science interesting and readable by a non-scientist audience. I highly recommend it to you all!

Kids books are really popular at Hatfield. What are some of your favorites? My newest favorite is Octopus Soup by Mercer Mayer, because it not only has our favorite animal here, the octopus, but it is also wonderful because it has no words. It has wonderful illustrations that create a fun and interesting story with a nice ending. One of my other favorite bestselling books is Oh Yuck!. This Workman book has been a favorite for years, and grandparents love purchasing this title. We have sold hundreds of this one, because it is a perfect combination of gross stuff and accurate science. What kid doesn’t love that?

What upcoming events you are excited about? I already mentioned Bruce Parker, an author who is a former chief scientist for NOAA, coming May 21 at 1:30 pm. In June we have a writer and artist, Taylor Morrison, who created a fisheries book (funded by NOAA) for all ages called A Good Catch. All of the authors that visit here for events speak in our auditorium on the subject, then sign books after the talk. That is the schedule for now, since we have our busy time of year June-August. It is sort of like our holiday sales season in comparison to other bookstores. Having our busy season so opposite from what I did for twenty years took me quite a while to get used to!

Name three Northwest authors you would invite to dinner? This is going to be a strange combination, but I would invite Ray Troll (Something Fishy This Way Comes), Duane Sept (The Beachcombers Guide to Seashore Life in the Pacific Northwest) and Jennifer Hahn (Pacific Feast: A Cook’s Guide to West Coast Foraging and Cuisine). And I would ask Jennifer to have one of her highlighted chefs cook for us! It would be overlooking the beach at sunset, of course. We’d have the wonderful offbeat humor of Troll, Sept’s expertise on the shore, lots of talk about great local food with Jennifer, and fresh seafood caught by our local fishing fleet.

No responses to “Questions for Lynne Wright, Coastal Reading Expert”

GEORGE MCCARTHY April 21, 2011 at 7:21 pm | Permalink | Reply

What a wonderful store and such a talented person who obviously loves books running it. Should I ever be in the area i would certainly stop by and have her recommend books to buy as well as some of the cute creatures as toys for my grandchildren.

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