Store will remain in, out of the zone
By Daily Bruin Staff
April 26, 2001 9:00 p.m.
 JANA SUMMERS UCLA’s BookZone in Ackerman Union will stay
open during the L.A. Times Festival of Books. It will also stock a
booth in Royce Quad.
By Michael Rosen-Molina
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
With so many visiting booksellers swarming over the campus, it
might be tempting for UCLA’s resident bookstore to take the
weekend off.
Contrary to expectations, UCLA’s BookZone will not only
keep its doors open, but will also participate in this
weekend’s Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, operating both
the Ackerman store and a large booth in the Royce Quad.
“The preparation starts right after the end of the last
year’s Festival of Books,” said BookZone Manager Guy
Adams. “The BookZone staff meets and discusses how the event
went and what changes we should make for the next year. The real
serious preparation, however, started about a month and a half
ago.” Although BookZone will operate a booth in addition to
its normal store, it does not hire any additional help for the
event.
“The L.A. Times put together a list back in autumn,”
said Jacques Freydont, director of academic support. “Certain
book stores are designated to bring the books associated with
certain panel discussions. In the past it was done by lottery, but
this year they’re trying to get a better match between
authors and stores.”
BookZone is the official bookseller for several authors,
including former Bruin basketball coach John Wooden, Professor
Jared Diamond and comedian Sandra Tsing Loh.
Wooden and Diamond are obvious BookZone candidates because of
their UCLA ties, but it is not immediately apparent why BookZone
was chosen to carry Tsing Loh’s book.”She’s an
L.A. comedian,” Freydont said. “She’s very
popular and very funny; I think that I’ve even heard other
comedians starting to imitate her diction. We had readings with her
in BookZone before she became popular. We talked to her publisher
and let them know that we’d love to have her back, so that
might be why they chose us.”
On Sunday, Wooden will appear at BookZone to sign copies of his
new book “Be Quick, Don’t Hurry.” Wooden co-wrote
the book with former UCLA men’s basketball player, turned
television producer, Andrew Hill, who will also be on hand for book
signings.
“An enormous amount of work goes into the Festival of
Books,” said Adams. “Everything from ordering books to
planning the staff to setting up the event has to be taken care of.
We’re fortunate that we’re the only exhibitor to have a
full store right here on campus, so we can be a little more
inventive with what we display. The planning started in March, and,
now that the ordered books have arrived, it is primarily a matter
of logistics, organizing inventory and filling the booth.
“We all do about 14 straight days of work for that work
week,” said Freydont. “It’s a lot of work setting
up and tearing down, but it’s lots of fun. It gives us a
chance to meet a different customer base.”
The BookZone store in Ackerman will make its regular stock
available to customers during the Festival, but only certain titles
will be specially showcased in the Royce Quad booth. Adams said
that the booth selection is intended to be a representative sample
of the merchandise available in the store.
Local interest books, including hiking and dining guides and
books written by Los Angeles authors, will be sold in the booth as
well as best-sellers and children’s books. In celebration of
National Poetry Month, the booth will also feature various poetry
books. During the Festival, all booth merchandise will be
discounted by 20 percent, a special deal for the huge crowds the
Festival attracts.
“We typically see about 100,000 people come for the
Festival,” said Richard MacBriar, BookZone’s main
buyer. “This is the event of the year for us and we put out a
lot of effort to make the store and the school look great.
You’d think that everyone would already be familiar with the
campus, but we also get a lot of first timers.”
Although BookZone underestimated the amount of books it needed
to sate the crowds’ appetite for literary fare at the first
Festival six years ago, the store has experienced few problems
since then. “It’s always gone really smoothly,”
Adams said.
“The only real problem has been that people sometimes keep
hanging around after things are supposed to start winding down. But
I’ll take that problem any day.”
BOOK: BookZone will operate both its Ackerman
Student Union store and its booth in Royce Quad for the Festival.
Call BookZone for more information at (310) 206-4041.
