Powell's Books

Powell's Books is a chain of bookstores in the Portland metropolitan area with origins in Chicago, Illinois. Powell's headquarters location, Powell's City of Books, claims to be the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world.

Powell's City of Books is located in the Pearl District on the edge of Downtown Portland|downtown, occupying a full city block between NW 10th and 11th Avenues and between W Burnside and NW Couch Streets. It is open 365 days a year, and contains over 68,000 ft² (6,300 m²) of retail floor space.

The inventory for its retail and online sales is over four million new, used, Book collecting|rare, and out-of-print books. ; since 2005 it has also offered DVDs, with an inventory of over 40,000, mostly available online. At its retail stores, it follows the somewhat unusual practice of shelving new and used books side-by-side. It buys around 3000 used books a day.

Powell's has had an Internet presence which began as email- and File transfer protocol|ftp-based access to its technical bookstore and has since expanded to incorporate fiction and other genres. Their website was established in 1994, before Amazon.com, and has contributed substantially to the chain's recent growth.

The company was founded by Walter Powell in 1971. His son, Michael Powell, had started a bookstore in Chicago, Illinois in 1970 which specializes in used, rare, and discounted books, primarily academic and scholarly. Michael Powell soon joined his father in Portland, leading the expansion business to what it is today.

Powell's is a member of the American Booksellers Association.

List of locations
In addition to its "City of Books" location, Powell's Books also has several smaller stores:
 * a technical bookstore on the North Park Blocks, a few blocks east of the main store
 * a 32,500 ft² (3,000 m²) general bookstore with the "largest children's book section of any book store on the West Coast", located at Cedar Hills Crossing in Beaverton, Oregon|Beaverton and opened in November 2006, replacing a decades-old location near Washington Square (Oregon)|Washington Square less than half its size;
 * another in Portland's Hawthorne, Portland, Oregon|Hawthorne District;
 * a store with cooking and gardening materials two spaces east of the Hawthorne store; and
 * three stores at the Portland International Airport, offering popular fiction and non-fiction, "choice" used books, games, toys, and a wide range of gifts.

Other information
Some of the store's actions have made big news in Portland. When the Oregon Citizens Alliance qualified Oregon Ballot Measure 9 (1992)|Ballot Measure 9 in 1992, an anti-gay rights measure, the bookstore actively campaigned against the measure. A few years later, a prolonged labor dispute between Powell's employees and Michael Powell over trade union|unionizing the employees tarnished Michael Powell's reputation as a champion of liberal causes. Powells.com is the only major online bookseller to be unionized.