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Like many lovers of books, Mary and her husband, Richard Goldman, seldom walked past a bookstore without stopping to look inside. They often talked of opening their own bookstore one day.
When Mary was hospitalized with heart trouble in 1989, they decided it was time to get serious. Richard, who worked for a business company, hoped to work for himself, and Mary needed to slow down from her demanding(很费力的)job.
They started by talking to bookstore owners and researching the industry. "We knew it had to be a specialty store because we couldn't compete with the big chains," says Mary. One figure caught her attention: She'd read nearly two hundred mysteries(推理小说), and many buyers spent more than $300 a year on books. She and Richard were themselves mystery readers.
On Halloween 1992, they opened the Mystery Lovers Bookshop near their home. With three children in college, the couple could not spend all the family's money to start a shop. To cover the $100,000 cost, they drew some of their savings and borrowed some money from relatives and from a bank.
The store merely broke even in its first year, with only $ 120,000 in sales. But Mary was always coming up with new ways to attract customers. The shop had a coffee bar and it offered gifts to mystery lovers and served dinners for book clubs that met in the store. ▲
Now they makes sales of about $ 420,000 a year. After paying taxes and other costs, they earned about $ 340.000.
"The job you love may not go hand in hand with a million-dollar income," says Richard. "This has always been about an enjoyable life for ourselves, not about making a lot of money."
