City Lights Books named PW's Bookseller of the Year

Publisher’s Weekly has named City Lights Books on Columbus Avenue its “Bookseller of the Year” for 2010.

“City Lights matches its literary strength with new marketing tools including a Web site, monthly e-newsletter, fan pages on Facebook and MySpace and daily news blasts through the store's Twitter account,” said an article in PW explaining the store’s selection.

The store will be honored in May at Book Expo America, the publishing industry’s annual convention, and the magazine will do a feature story on the store in its April 26^th edition.

City Lights was founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin. It started out as an all-paperback store and now sells hardcover and softcover books from major and minor publishers on three floors. Two years after the store's founding, Ferlinghetti launched a publishing arm that at first printed a "Pocket Poets" series. City Lights Publishers now has about 100 books in print and publishes about a dozen new titles each year.