The Mystery Company
www.themysterycompany.com
1323 South Rangeline Road
Carmel, IN 46032
(317) 705-9711

Mystery bookstores may traffic in death on a daily basis, but in March 2003 one store came back to life when The Mystery Company opened in Carmel, Indiana (part of greater Indianapolis). Owned and operated by Jim Huang and Jennie Jacobson, this new store is also the latest incarnation of Deadly Passions, the mystery bookstore that the couple ran in Kalamazoo, Michigan for eight years, and which subsequently morphed into an on-line mystery bookseller.

The couple is happy to be back in the realm of bricks and mortar, though they continue to maintain a strong Web-based business. "The Internet has sharpened our database skills," notes Huang, and a good database allows him to manage and sell the titles of small and specialty publishers who are not well-served by the chains and wholesalers.

"We place our emphasis on selling books that the chain stores and the discount stores don't," says Huang. "We do offer the bestsellers, and we will sell them happily, but we put our efforts (newsletter, discussion group, in-store display) into promoting books and authors who are not yet bestsellers." Huang is personally familiar with the challenges that small presses face, as he is also the publisher both of the magazine The Drood Review and of the Crum Creek Press, which has reissued out-of-print titles by such authors as Kate Flora, Barbara D'Amato, and Terence Faherty.

The move to a larger metropolitan area has also proven a challenge, says Huang; the store must market itself more aggressively in this larger market. But at the same time, Huang says he was surprised at the dearth of independent bookstores in the Indianapolis area. "Our opening increased the independent bookselling ranks by twenty-five percent," he notes. And the store has already begun to build a community among local mystery fans and writers through author events and by hosting a mystery discussion group as well as a local chapter of Sisters in Crime.

Since he was new to the area himself not so long ago, Huang suggests a number of writers who can provide a good introduction to the local scene, including Michael Lewin, Jeanne Dams, Troy Soos, D. R. Schanker, and Terence Faherty. "One thing we were able to do in Kalamazoo was to expand the mystery reading community there. We got people who didn't read mysteries to try them, and they'd come back for more. We hope that over time, we can do that here as well."