Best New Used Bookstore by Pitch Weekly

October 9, 2003

River City Books

108 East Missouri, 816-283-8344
When it comes to success stories, used-book stores are like three-legged thoroughbreds — it’s best not to put money on them, yet it’s impossible not to cheer them on. So it goes with River City Books. Last December, Carrie Pacey (Atkins) opened the store at the entryway to the River Market, just across the Walnut Street bridge from downtown. With the help of her husband, Todd, Pacey has filled the small shop with high-quality paperbacks that are rarely priced at more than $10 and usually go for half that. Kansas City’s budget-minded book lovers would be foolish not to keep River City Books in business. Plus, the Paceys are expecting a baby. Not that you should be influenced by that, but still.
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This is where most of my “freelance” designing began. Not only did we run a bookstore in the City Market / River Market but also provided a newsletter to the local community businesses and residents. The newsletter promoted the other local small businesses and their successes. We sold advertising at a very reasonable rates and designed a map of the River Market businesses that could be handed out in their places of business. Our efforts greatly benefited the Market and as you can see, we were rewarded for this effort.

During my years of co-running a used bookstore, newspaper and small gallery (set up in the back of the store) – I spent a lot of time designing newspaper ads and flyers, running an online publication of our newsletter, holding monthly “small business appreciation” parties at other small businesses, hosting local artist gallery showings and attempting to start 3rd Fridays in the River Market. You can see the logo I designed for the effort.

We mostly sold books by the great literary expatriates of Paris, among them were Sherwood Anderson, Djuna Barnes, Samuel Beckett, Kay Boyle, John Dos Passos, Lawrence Durrell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein. Other commonly seen authors were Kurt Vonnegut and Hunter S. Thompson.

It was a very sad day when we lost our lease to cupcakes.