Computer Literacy Bookshops was a local chain of bookstores selling primarily technical-oriented books in Northern California. It was founded in 1983 in Sunnyvale, California, where its concentration in technical books fit well with its Silicon Valley customer base.
Computer Literacy was acquired by CBooks Express in 1997, and after going public traded as fatbrain.com, selling books both online and in brick-and-mortar stores. Fatbrain was acquired by Barnes & Noble in 2000, which absorbed the company into its main enterprise, and shut down the physical stores the following year.
The first Computer Literacy Bookshop was opened in March 1983 [1] [2] on Lawrence Expressway between Lakeside Drive and Titan Way in Sunnyvale, California, by founders Dan Doernberg and Rachel Unkefer. It was located in the heart of Silicon Valley, not far from where the original Fry's Electronics store opened two years later. In 1987 the company opened two additional stores: one on North First Street in San Jose [3] and another in the TechMart complex near Great America in Santa Clara. The San Jose store was probably the largest computer bookstore in America, with over 14,000 square feet of floorspace dedicated to new computer books.[ citation needed ] The TechMart store subsequently relocated to the headquarters of Apple Computer, Inc. at One Infinite Loop in Cupertino.
The store not only sold books and periodicals but displayed galley pre-prints for skimming and editing, held author and guest engineer speaking events such as Gene Amdahl or Donald Knuth.
In 1993, the only East Coast location was opened in the Tysons Corner area of suburban Washington, DC to make a total of four bricks-and-mortar locations. On August 25, 1991, the company registered the domain name clbooks.com and began taking book orders from customers worldwide via email. Their UUCP hostname was clb_books.
In 1995, Chris MacAskill and Kim Orumchian started an online bookstore called CBooks Express, specializing in computer-related books. The domain for CBooks Express was cbooks.com. Computer Literacy Bookstores moved[ when? ] to sue CBooks Express for trademark infringement. Instead, the young company acquired Computer Literacy Bookshops in 1997. [4] [5] The combined company became ComputerLiteracy.com, and it went public in 1998. [6]
Soon after going public the company was renamed Fatbrain.com [7] (NASDAQ FATB) after a six-month process to come up with a new name. Company executives worked with branding specialists Interbrand Group; but eventually a name suggested by the company's editorial director, Deborah Bohn, was chosen. Along with the new name, a new logo (an emoticon: {*}) and slogan were introduced.
In the summer of 1999 Fatbrain started selling electronic documents under the eMatter brand. [8] This was eventually spun off as a new company called MightyWords. [9]
Fatbrain.com was acquired and absorbed by Barnes & Noble, the large bookstore chain, in November 2000. [10] The physical stores were finally closed on December 1, 2001, and the domain name clbooks.com was retired; it is now operated by an unrelated organization.
Borders Group, Inc. was an American multinational book and music retailer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. In its final year, the company employed about 19,500 people throughout the U.S., primarily in its Borders and Waldenbooks stores.
Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. The company operates approximately 600 retail stores across all 50 U.S. states.
Chapters Inc. is a Canadian big box bookstore banner owned by Indigo Books and Music. Formerly a separate company competing with Indigo, the combined company has continued to operate both banners since their merger in 2001. As of July 2017, it operated 89 superstores under the banners Chapters and Indigo, and 122 small format stores under the banners Coles, Indigospirit, SmithBooks and The Book Company.
Fry's Electronics was an American big-box store chain. It was headquartered in San Jose, California, in Silicon Valley. Fry's retailed software, consumer electronics, household appliances, cosmetics, tools, toys, accessories, magazines, technical books, snack foods, electronic components, and computer hardware. Fry's had in-store computer repair and custom computer building services.
Tattered Cover is a bookstore chain in Denver, Colorado. It is one of the largest independent bookstores in the United States. Tattered Cover is open seven days a week at all branches, hosts prominent book signings, and is known for its customer service. Together, the stores maintain an inventory of over half a million books. Its LoDo store houses an events space that can seat over 250 persons, while its East Colfax store can seat around 100.
Walden Book Company, Inc., doing business as Waldenbooks, was an American shopping mall-based bookstore chain and a subsidiary of Borders Group. The chain also ran a video game and software chain under the name Waldensoftware, as well as a children's educational toy chain under Walden Kids. In 2011, the chain was liquidated in bankruptcy.
Books Kinokuniya is a Japanese bookstore chain operated by Kinokuniya Company Ltd., founded in 1927, with its first store located in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. Its name translates to "Bookstore of Kii Province". The company has its headquarters in Meguro, Tokyo.
The Good Guys, Inc., was an American chain of consumer electronics retail stores with 71 stores in California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. The company was headquartered in Brisbane, California in the Dakin Building in the early 1990s and subsequently in Alameda, California until it was bought in late 2003 by Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, who also purchased CompUSA, OfficeMax, Barnes & Noble, Office Depot, Borders, and Circuit City. The Good Guys was founded in 1973 by Ron Unkefer on Chestnut Street, San Francisco. By 2006, all of the company's stores had closed.
Lambda Rising was an LGBT bookstore that operated from 1974 to 2010 in Washington, D.C.
An independent bookstore is a retail bookstore which is independently owned. Usually, independent stores consist of only a single actual store. They may be structured as sole proprietorships, closely held corporations or partnerships, cooperatives, or nonprofits. Independent stores can be contrasted with chain bookstores, which have many locations and are owned by corporations which often have divisions in other lines besides bookselling. Specialty stores such as comic book shops tend to be independent.
Brentano's was an American bookstore chain with numerous locations in the United States.
B. Dalton Bookseller was an American retail bookstore chain founded in 1966 by Bruce Dayton, a member of the same family that operated the Dayton's department store chain. B. Dalton expanded to become the largest retailer of hardcover books in the United States, with 779 stores at the peak of the chain's success. Located mainly at indoor shopping malls, B. Dalton competed primarily with Waldenbooks. Barnes & Noble acquired the chain from Dayton's in 1987 and continued to operate it until a late 2009 announcement that the last 50 stores would be liquidated by January 2010. B. Dalton was later revived by rebranding a Barnes & Noble location in 2022.
Barnes & Noble Education, Inc. is one of the largest operators of college bookstores in the United States. As of the end of 2020, Barnes & Noble Education operated 760 campus bookstores and school-branded e-commerce sites through its Barnes & Noble College Booksellers division. The company is headquartered in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.
Crown Books was a bookseller headquartered in Prince George's County, Maryland, with a Largo post office address. It was founded in the Washington, D.C., metro area by Robert Haft in 1977. Crown Books (retail) is of no relation to Crown Books (publisher), although the former carried inventory from the latter.
ComputerWare: The MacSource was a chain of ten Macintosh-only retail stores in the greater San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California founded by Karim Khashoggi and Drew Munster. At one time, they were the largest Macintosh-only reseller in the United States. Guy Kawasaki mentions ComputerWare a number of times in his book, The Macintosh Way. Besides the ten stores, ComputerWare also had a headquarters that held international, direct, and corporate sales departments, and at one time had a full hardware repair depot and various training centers on the Bay Area.
The Gotham Book Mart was a famous Midtown Manhattan bookstore and cultural landmark that operated from 1920 to 2007. The business was located first in a small basement space on West 45th Street near the Theater District, then moved to 51 West 47th Street, then spent many years at 41 West 47th Street within the Diamond District in Manhattan, New York City, before finally moving to 16 East 46th Street. Beyond merely selling books, the store virtually played as a literary salon, hosting meetings of the Finnegans Wake Society, the James Joyce Society, poetry and author readings, art exhibits, and more. It was known for its distinctive sign above the door which read, "Wise Men Fish Here". The store specialized in poetry, literature, books about theater, art, music and dance. It sold both new books as well as out-of-print and rare books.
Book store shoplifting is a problem for book sellers and has sometimes led stores to keep certain items behind store counters.
Sunnyvale Town Center was a two-level shopping mall located in Sunnyvale, California, USA. It opened in 1979 on the site of much of the city's downtown, and was anchored by Macy's, Montgomery Ward, and later, J.C. Penney. Target moved in when Montgomery Ward closed. By the early 2000s, the mall had failed financially and only the Target and Macy's stores remained open. Work on a mixed-use development to replace the mall was stalled by a legal dispute from 2009 to 2015, with most buildings incomplete, but resumed after the city reached an agreement with new developers in mid-2016. By the end of 2020, a multi-screen movie theater and a supermarket had been built and opened in addition to most of the residential buildings; as of January 2021, replacement plans were going forward for a group of lots including the site of Macy's, which closed in 2019. Much of the area has now been rebranded as CityLine Sunnyvale.
A Different Light was a chain of four LGBT bookstores in the United States, active from 1979 to 2011.
Bookstop Inc. was a Texas-based chain of bookstores that was at one time the fourth-largest bookselling chain in the United States. In 1989 Barnes & Noble acquired the company, at which point it became a subsidiary of Barnes & Noble. The chain also did business under the name Bookstar due to trademark conflicts in other states.