Buy local.

Several community economic studies show that for every $100 spent at a small, local business, $60-$70 stays within the community as those dollars go towards local payroll, local business support services, local charities and local taxes.

That same $100 at a large chain store? Only about $15-43 stays within the local community. Buying online at a big out-of-state web company? Virtually none of that money stays in Denver.

Just as there is an effort take money out of the big banks and depositing it in local banks and credit unions, there is an effort to support local businesses over the the corporate retail and online behemoths like Wal-Mart and Amazon. It’s those small businesses that are in many ways the fabric of our community. They provide our neighborhoods with character and contribute their money locally. And even if you’re purchasing items for out-of-town friends and family, many businesses have shipping services.

We here at Capitol Hill Books have provided hundreds of dollars over the years to local non-profit organizations from the money generated by our red carts, as well as contributing books and other items to various charities and events.

And it’s not just our store that survives because from our loyal, local customers. There are numerous small businesses all over the Denver area that rely on community support. So be sure to check out the 3/50 Project and Mile High Business Alliance web sites for more information about supporting the local businesses you cherish.

Remember several months ago when Google visited our store? They were working on a new project to create 360 degree views of local businesses. Apparently, we weren’t paying attention and Google put up its view of Capitol Hill Books, several months ago.

You can access it by searching Capitol Hill Books on Google. This very web site is the first result of course, but if you click on the little red tab underneath our web site link you’ll be taken to our Google page where you can access the 360 view. It’s also available to people who are navigating Denver’s streets via Google Maps and Google’s Street View. Or it’s also right here. Pretty neat, huh?

It’s basically a first-person view through out store. And it’s interactive, allowing you to travel through all three of our main rooms and see what was on our shelves on May 19, 2010. You’ll even see a couple of hard-working Capitol Hill Books employees helping some of our wonderful customers.

It’s almost as cool as the little video we made of Capitol Hill Books. Though the Google version has a distinct lack of Elvis Costello.

Thanks Google for giving Capitol Hill Books the 360 degree treatment. We think our store looks great! So if you want the inside view of the store you can check it out on Google or step into the store yourself, of course.

This puddle was knee deep!

Streets don’t drain like they used to.

Colfax: Travel on car, truck, bike or kayak.

We at Capitol Hill Books savor providing people with their favorite things no matter if they live two blocks or two states away from us. That is why we offer shipping services to our customer for any purchases made at Capitol Hill Books. As long as the address is in the United States, we can ship anywhere (Well…almost anywhere. We can’t ship to prisons).

We package our orders right at our on-site shipping facilities and you can be sure that our packaging is done professionally using high-quality materials to protect the contents inside. We can ship individual books or dozens of books and only charge a nominal fee to cover the shipping cost and materials. We primarily use low-cost media mail for shipping books, but we can often ship items using USPS expedited mail for a quicker delivery time.

So whether you are an out-of-town visitor wanting to ship books home or a local wanting to surprise a loved-one with a brown-paper package, look to Capitol Hill Books to provide professional packing services for your books and gifts.

Call us at 303.837.077 or email us at info@capitolhillbooks.com for more information about our shipping services.

Here is a sneak peek at our basement shipping facilities. It's where the magic happens.

One of the fun things about having this new WordPress web site, is our ability to see our site visits. We’ve been so wonderfully surprised by people checking out our web site from all across the country and even the world and realize that many of our web site visitors may never have a chance to visit our physical store. Although we encourage them to do so if they are ever in Denver.

Though our web site has lots of photos, none of them quite do justice to a full walk-through of our vast three-room store. So we decided to whip up a little video taken from still photographs to show the inside of Capitol Hill Books. We’ve added a few helpful captions to show some interesting parts along the way, but if any of you viewers have anything else you’d like to know about from the tour, please let us know in the comments.

The song during the video is Elvis Costello’s classic “Every Day I Write the Book,” the best ever song written about the similarities of being in a relationship and writing a novel.

Wryn and his teacher Ms. Bowles show off Wryn's efforts.

Which is why we were so excited to hear about 14-year old Wryn’s awesome Eagle Scout project. Wryn is a very ambitious kid. Most boy scouts don’t receive their Eagle Scout rank until 16 or 17, yet Wryn completed his before he even finished his freshman year in high school.

Wryn’s project came from talking to his former teacher Scharlotte Bowles at Platte River Academy about how to encourage kids to enjoy reading.

“There are a lot of teenagers out there who don’t like what they read and if I could give them an opportunity to read something that would interesting, they’d have a spark in their love of reading,” Wryn said.

Wryn’s project was multi-faceted. First he hand-built several large bookshelves for the classroom. Then he raised money by asking the local PTA and friends and family for funds to buy books. Then with about $600 in hand, he thought of the best place to get the most books for the least amount of money.

That was when Wryn contacted us. He originally thought to do a book drive but worried that he’d get a bunch of random Danielle Steel novels, not the type of books that would typically inspire a middle-schooler. So we immediately went to work when he contacted us, rummaging through our collections to find the books from a list Ms. Bowles prepared and suggesting dozens of titles on our own. Together we came up with 130 books for Ms. Bowles’ classroom.

Wryn has only to pass through the Boy Scouts Board of Review to get his Eagle Scout. He feels confident he’ll get his Eagle Scout since he has a track record of service with the scouts including maintaining trails and helping clean neighbor’s houses. Wryn definitely is a bright young man with a great looking future ahead of him and we’re just glad to help him with his goals.

And of course we’d be happy to help with your project too. Need books for a specific purpose? Want to know if Capitol Hill Books can provide a donation of books, gift certificates or even money to a charitable cause? Or do you simply need a space to inform the community about your upcoming event or project? Capitol Hill Books can help in a variety of community endeavors. Just give us a call at 303.837.0700 or e-mail us at Info@capitolhillbooks.com to see what we can do for you.

Colorado small businesses are open for the holidays.

Our small business is ready for the holiday season

There is actually a national trend to support “Small Business Saturday,” as a day to go out and share the love of your favorite small businesses all across the country.

So this Saturday, November 27, Capitol Hill Books is getting on the “Small Business Saturday” bandwagon and offering a 10 percent discount on used books for anyone who mentions Small Business Saturday to us. So get out there and support your local small businesses and all the holiday cheer they give to our communities.

Our fresh and cool new products

Chicken? Spaceman? Whatever.

Our new labeling system creates some interesting surprises.

We’ve added some more fun products for our customers including “optic bookmarks” that change when your perspective does, fun, beaded pen covers in explosive colors, inexpensive notebooks hand dyed by Indonesian free-trade artisans, locally produced buttons featuring artistic drawings of your favorite authors along with thought-provoking quotes, new post cards and greeting cards with bold images and even bolder messages and of course our popular and hilarious magnets.

We also continue to carry reading glasses in a variety of strengths and fun designs. Here are some fun new wardrobe magnets that allow you to dress up or down Einstein and Sigmund Freud. Come on in and put Einstein into a chicken suit.

Don’t worry. We’re not ignoring our books to push cards and magnets. We love our little inexpensive gift items, but we know that a bookstore still needs to be about the books. That is why we continue to work to make our bookstore more organized and easy to use for our customers. We recently added small alphabetic placards throughout many of our shelves to show customers exactly where author Trezza Azzopardi ends and author Isaac Babel begins. Yes, we have begun to alphabetize many of our most popular sections including fiction (both hardcover and small paperback), mystery, speculative fiction, and psychology. We hope that these placards will make it easier for our customers to find what they are looking for, but of course our staff is always ready to answer any questions.

We appreciate that our customers keep returning to our store and just want to let them know that we will keep striving to make the customer experience better. And that means hearing from you. Please let us know if you’d like to see any other changes at Capitol Hill Books. While we may not always be able to accommodate every suggestion, we’ll definitely take it seriously and try to figure out how we can make improvements. So go ahead..click the comment button, use our posted e-mail to send us a message, or simply come in the store and tell us what we can do to make the store work better for you.

Perfectly cluttered in every way.

For the second year in a row, the reader’s of 5280 Magazine have voted Capitol Hill Books as the best used bookstore in Denver. We’re proud to continue receiving awards after 30 years at our wonderful location, which as 5280 noted is “situated between a gritty stretch of Colfax and the more polished veneer of downtown.”

We’re just happy to have customers that appreciate our “Perfectly cluttered bookshelves,” and keep returning to our store even when new technologies present entirely different reading options than we can offer.

So thanks to 5280 Magazine, its readers and to our customers who continue to value books and our bookstore throughout our 30 years in business.

Look stylish and thrifty with your own Capitol Hill Books' bag

Just a few weeks ago we introduced a new product at Capitol Hill Books, a book bag made from recycled plastic that is perfect for almost any errand.

Now there is another incentive to buy these awesome bags: They’ll save you money! Starting now, anybody who purchases books in the store with our red book bags will get an automatic 10 percent discount good on any used books in the store.

Before we get too generous, we should say that our customers can only use one discount at a time, so those with frequent shopper cards cannot combine discounts. And of course the discount is only good for those who purchase books instead of use trade credit, but other than that, there are no more catches or caveats. Buy one of our red book bags for $3.95 and get 10 percent off your used book purchases every time you bring it to Capitol Hill Books. It’s our way of rewarding customers for reducing their use of plastic bags and helping spread the word of Capitol Hill Books across the land.