Once large outlets replace a sense of exploration by patrons with formulaic categories, the location takes on a distaste, a sense of being manipulated and homogenized by absentee category marketers instead of being served by a bookstore in a community.

Please leave "category management" to the soap merchants. You have undertaken a higher calling, one to which we hope that you are equal.

Sincerely,

Peter Barnes, co-founder, Working Assets; author, Who Owns the Sky?
Greg Bates, Publisher, Common Courage Press
David Bollier, author, Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of our Common Wealth
James Boyle, Professor, Duke Law School; author, Shamans, Software and Spleens
Liane Casten, author, Breast Cancer: Poisons, Profits and Prevention
Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jeff Cohen, co-author, Wizards of Media Oz and Adventures in Medialand
Richard B. Du Boff, Samuel and Etta Wexler Professor of Economics
Emeritus, Bryn Mawr College
Paul Duguid, co-author, The Social Life of Information
Laura Flanders, author, Real Majority, Media Minority: The Costs of Sidelining Women in Reporting