Rainy Day Books
Rainy Day Books is an independent bookstore in Fairway, Kansas, a wealthy suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, and one of the leading independent bookstores in the United States. It was founded on November 4, 1975 and is owned and operated by Vivien Jennings.
Rainy Day Books is open 6 days a week, every day but Sunday when the staff "spends time with our families." The store has been nationally recognized for its author events, most of which are ticketed events hosted off-site at Unity Temple on The Plaza. Publishers Weekly says that "Rainy Day Books sets the gold standard" for author events.
Rainy Day Books began as a used bookstore, offering a paperback exchange program where readers could trade used books for credit and pay a small fee to exchange for other paperbacks. Unlike many other used bookstores, Rainy Day Books never purchased stock from customers. Within a year, the store moved to a new expanded location in the Fairway Shops and added a full line of new books. The store moved again to an anchor location in the same shopping center in 1998. Over the next year and a half, the store discontinued the used paperback exchange program and expanded the inventory of new titles specifically for book club readers.
Rainy Day Books is a member of the American Booksellers Association as well as Book Sense, a national cooperative marketing group of independent booksellers.
Other information
Rainy Day Books was named a "Winning Workplace" for its innovative approach to business.
Rainy Day Books is the subject of a business case study used by several universities to show how independent booksellers have adapted to compete with large chains and online booksellers.
Rainy Day Books was the plaintiff in a 2001 legal case that set the standard for Internet-based personal jurisdiction in Kansas. The case, Rainy Day Books, Inc. v. Rainy Day Books & Cafe, LLC, 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2043 (D. Kan. 2002), has been cited as precedent in numerous cases since.
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Coordinates: 39°02′01″N 94°37′01″W / 39.0336°N 94.6170°W