The Holts Summit Community Empowerment Foundation will be hosting a book sale this weekend in the location it plans to soon turn into a bookstore under the name Retold Tale.
All proceeds from the sale and bookstore will go to pay down the debt the HSCEF took on to renovate the space for the incoming Holts Summit Public Library.
The sale will run 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday, Sunday and Monday next to the library's location in the Holts Summit Plaza on West Simon Boulevard. More than 40,000 books will be available covering all genres, foundation member Marty Wilson said.
"We're even going to have a sale on cookbooks because we have cases and cases of those, so we're going to sell them off cheap," he added.
Hardback books will be on sale for $3, paperbacks for $1, and children's books will be four for $1. Games, puzzles and movies will also be sold. Wilson said HSCEF is expecting another large shipment of donated books to sell in March.
In an effort to entice a library system to bring a branch to Holts Summit, HSCEF took on $325,000 in debt to renovate the space in Summit Plaza. The Daniel Boone Regional Library announced it would be opening the Holts Summit Public Library late last year.
HSCEF has run several book sales in the past months as it begins to pay back loans, relying on donations of books and other materials to sell.
"The response from the community for the book sales was overwhelming, so we just went ahead and created a store," Wilson said.
Retold Tale will not officially be open for a few weeks, he added, as the foundation is currently obtaining the licensing for the business and creating signage. But, the group decided to continue with the book sales in the location for the eventual bookstore, giving residents a chance to see what it will look like.
Wilson said the interior of the store is finished. It is simple, he added, because the group plans to renovate the location into a community center once it finishes paying off the debt for the library.
"It's set up as best we can set it up because we don't want to put in a bunch of money if we're going to have to turn around and gut everything out anyway," he added.
Once Retold Tale is open, its hours will likely be 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Wilson said if demand is high enough, the business could be open during the week.