Becoming a Voice, The Stuart Book Dump

“On a trip to Colorado, I stopped at a gas station at the Stuart, Iowa, exit, and because my credit card didn’t work at the pump, I had to go inside. As I waited in line, I saw a display of A Disgrace to the Profession along with a review from the Des Moines Register. I read the review while waiting in line and decided to buy the book. I threw it on the dash of my car, and I didn’t touch it until a week after I returned from Colorado. I picked it up about 9:00 one evening and couldn’t put it down. I read late into the night and finished it the first thing the next morning. I found myself getting more and more emotionally involved with each chapter.” Ron Sears, PEI Voice (the Professional Educators of Iowa newsletter)

Our most surprising retail site has been the Stuart book dump. The misleading label “book dump” describes a stand-alone floor container that displays books. And in this case, it really does stand alone—in a BP gas station/convenience store along Interstate 80 on the edge of Stuart, a town in west central Iowa.

Charles was born in and grew up in Stuart. Although he now resides in Ames, Iowa, he lived on a farm near Stuart during the majority of his teaching career. Readers of A Disgrace to the Profession will also recognize Stuart as Nicholas Staal’s hometown. (We first called the town Crescent and then decided to just pick a real place.) Tom Newton, Charles’ son and co-owner of the BP station, suggested that we put the book dump there.

We really thought the Stuart market was saturated. After all, Charles has many, many friends there, and the majority of them already own the book. We did a fund-raiser for the Stuart Public Library and sold and signed books for almost 3 hours; after that, the library continued to sell books. We also appeared at Good Egg Days, Stuart’s annual summer festival.

But the Stuart book dump has been a great retail outlet for us; the book continues to sell well. Maybe it’s the location of the station—part way between Omaha and Des Moines and within view of the interstate. Maybe it’s because those waiting to pay for their gas and snacks read the reviews on the display and pick up the book out of curiosity. Maybe it’s what Cleta Sullivan, the manager, tells them while they’re looking at the book. What we do know is that some people have bought one book heading east or west on their round-trips; then on the way home, those same people have bought more books. The manager recalls that a school administrator from Illinois purchased one heading west and 10 when he returned heading east.

Ron Sears, the retired teacher who bought a book on his way to Colorado, bought 20 more books after he returned home. He wrote an article about the book for the PEI Voice. That article resulted in the book’s submission to Education Matters, the publication of the Professional Educators of America, who called it “the most popular of all the books reviewed by our staff and the book review council over the past several years. If ever there was a powerful, moving, and clear statement of what ails American public schools and the institutional barriers facing good teachers attempting to really educate our young people, this is it.”

You can’t buy publicity like that!

Watch for our next posting: Becoming a Voice, On the Road.