Veteran sellers of used books open store with 80,000 tomes

Zephyr Books owns a niche eschewed by the giant chain stores: used books.

Independent booksellers Lee and Ivye Johnson just opened a 5,000-square-foot bookstore at 1501 S. Virginia Street and stocked it with 80,000 titles. Zephyr also handles special orders as well as locating hard-to-find and out-of-print books from around the world.

"There's hardly anything we don't have a book on," says Lee Johnson.

But the owners don't just sell books; they also buy and trade. Plus, the store is home to a coffee bar and is open seven days a week. Book signings by local authors are planned. Details at the Web site: zephyrbooks.com.

The Zephyr building, long vacant, was formerly home to a Kragen Auto Supply store. This past year the entire South Virginia Plaza got a facelift when the storefronts were faced with a warm brown stucco.

The location is the draw, says Ivye Johnson. It includes provides both visibility and accessible parking. And, she adds, "Friends of the Library were holding their book sales here, so people were already accustomed to coming here to buy used books."

There is no typical customer, she says, and includes students who come with summer reading lists in hand.

Zephyr is not the Johnsons first used bookstore. Black & White Books was in business from 1994 to 2001, when the couple sold to new owners.

But when that store closed, the Johnsons bought the remaining inventory. They did the same when Pathways closed. And when an Internet bookstore folded. Such a stash was the inspiration for their first book business.

"It started when our daughter married a book scout," says Ivye Johnson. "The young couple wanted to move to Portland but couldn't move their garage full of books. So we bought them."

Estate sales can yield entire private libraries "But those are becoming scarce," says Lee Johnson. "Not as many people consider a home library a necessity anymore."

With a keen interest in local Western history, he also knows books and recently conducted a book appraisal clinic at the Sparks branch of Washoe County Library.

Lee Johnson says, "People say a boat is a hole in the water you throw money into. Some people have a boat. I have a bookstore."

The first store, Black & White Books, paid the bills, he recalls, but was never a cash cow.

"But when you're in the book business, your clientele is the best people in town," he says. "You meet all the most interesting people."