Library used bookstore brings in the bucks in Murrieta
Most libraries have a used book store. No doubt they generate a few bucks that certainly go to a good cause.
Then there is the Friends of the Murrieta Library’s Corner Store, at 39445
Los Alamos Road.
Brace yourself before you learn what the store’s gross receipts were last year — $99,600.
This year, manager Nancy Dixon anticipates, the store should easily hit the six-figure mark in sales.
An example of the store’s volume was the recent sidewalk overstock sales, where books were set up on outside tables. Deals galore (hardbacks were a dollar, paperbacks a quarter) and $2,400 was generated. That’s a lot of books and bucks.
By comparison, another used book store next to the Murrieta library brought in about $26,000 last year. In Temecula, two used book stores connected to the libraries there produced $53,000 between them.
Darlene Lynn, treasurer of the Friends of the Temecula Libraries, notes that the group is all volunteers. Despite all the good intentions, the shutdowns brought on by the pandemic and the ongoing shift of readers to e-books have affected the Temecula stores.
“It has been difficult to raise our sales levels,” she said.
Dixon’s store is bucking that trend.
She said her place was able to stay open more during the pandemic because of its size — 3,100 square feet — which allowed it to host more customers and still meet the social distancing requirements of those turbulent times.
“We were getting business from all over the Inland Empire,” she said. “Once they focused on us and how fantastic we are, it just kept building and building.”
Dixon, 83, certainly knows how to make things happen.
Sure, she’s petite and soft spoken, in addition to being a nun for 10 years and an English teacher at Mater Dei High School in Orange County. Later, she became a social worker and then a Los Angeles County health administrator. After that, she was a writing consultant in San Diego.
She’s had a busy life. Dixon said her varied talents come together in managing the book store, a job she’s done for 22 years, all as a volunteer. The store is open 42 hours a week, spread over six days, all handled by free help. It’s closed Sunday because Dixon said she can’t get volunteers regularly. Even volunteers need a day off.
Her fastidiousness is evident in how the books are presented.
After books are dropped off as donations, they are spruced up with an all-purpose cleaner that’s environmentally friendly, Dixon is careful to add. Lighter fluid, which is acid free, is even used delicately to remove stickers. It’s quite an operation.
“We don’t put junk out,” she said proudly.
Dixon got involved with the Murrieta library shortly after it opened in 1999. She moved to town in 1996, after discovering the place while passing through on the way to Palm Springs.
“I came in and I fell in love,” she said.
It’s hardly surprising that a bookstore manager who’s also a former high school English teacher is a writer, too. Dixon has written a children’s story about a mouse trapped in a bookstore and is working on a historical novel based on her family coming to San Francisco in 1850 via Panama.
It sounds like quite the adventure, just like her life.
And what better place to find adventure than a bookstore.