How a veteran bookseller survived the chain bookstores

On the eve of his 25th anniversary as a bookseller, here's a great profile of Books & Books' Mitchell Kaplan. In the Florida Sun-Sentinel:

"If you had asked me in college, I might have harbored ambitions of becoming an author or being creative in that sense," Kaplan says, sitting in the cafe at Books & Books ... "But I probably never had the patience or the talent. Somehow, acting as a conduit between authors and readers assuages the creative urges I have."

His is the last major independent bookstore in south Florida. He started it in a 500 square-foot space, and now he has branch shops in Miami Beach, Bal Harbour, Coral Gables, and (coming soon) in the Caribbean on Grand Cayman island.

There are interesting nuggets in the article about how Books & Books has thrived despite invading bookstore chains, but Kaplan doesn't have much to say about the Internet or e-books.