Books-A-Million Brand Guidelines: A 1917 Florence Newsstand, Bookland and 2nd & Charles

A newsstand built from piano crates.

Books-A-Million traces its start to 1917 in Florence, Alabama. The Encyclopedia of Alabama, in an entry first published in 2008 and updated in 2024, says that Clyde W. Anderson, then 14, heard construction workers at the nearby Wilson Dam complain that they could not buy their hometown newspapers. He arranged with northern publishers and the railroads to ship those papers to Florence and sold them from a rough newsstand built from piano crates. Within a few years, the encyclopedia says, the profits let Anderson and his brother put money into their first bookshop in downtown Florence.

The second generation turned the shop into a chain. Charles C. Anderson, Clyde’s son, took over the store in 1950 and began opening more; the shops were incorporated as Bookland in 1964. Through the 1970s Bookland followed the new shopping malls across the American South, and by 1980 it had 50 stores, according to both the encyclopedia and English Wikipedia. Charles Anderson also set up a book and magazine distribution business, and his sons, Charles Jr. and Clyde B., worked in the shops and on the wholesale side.

In 1988 Bookland bought Gateway Books, a chain based in Knoxville, Tennessee. The encyclopedia says the purchase doubled the company’s size, though 27 of the 50 stores it then had were later closed. The same year the company tried its first superstore, in Huntsville, Alabama, stocked with surplus books and fixtures. The encyclopedia says that store did not succeed, but a 30,000-square-foot superstore opened nearby under the name Books-A-Million did, and it settled the company’s move into large-format shops.

Bookland, superstores and 2nd & Charles.

In 1992 the company took the Books-A-Million name for the whole business, becoming Books-A-Million, Inc., and listed its shares on the Nasdaq. By 1993 it ran 113 stores across the South, the encyclopedia says: about 84 Bookland shops and 29 Books-A-Million superstores. The smaller formats did not disappear. English Wikipedia lists four store names in use — Books-A-Million, Bookland, Books & Company and 2nd & Charles — and says most stores have a Joe Muggs café, a coffee and espresso bar. The encyclopedia adds that the company spun the café idea out into free-standing Joe Muggs Newsstands with fireplaces, outdoor patios and thousands of magazine titles.

The chain went online in 1998 with booksamillion.com, which the encyclopedia says offered the same products and discounts as the shops. In 1999 it bought NetCentral, the Nashville web firm that had built the site, and began operating American Wholesale Book Company, a book wholesaler and distributor. In April 2010, English Wikipedia says, it took a 40 percent stake in the frozen-yogurt franchisor Yogurt Mountain, and later opened Yogurt Mountain counters in some of its bookstores.

2nd & Charles followed in September 2010: a shop trading in used books, comics, games and other media, with its first branch in Hoover, Alabama, opposite the Riverchase Galleria, English Wikipedia says. The encyclopedia describes those stores as a clearinghouse for used material. The company has also kept a regional voice: the encyclopedia says it let stores run local campaigns on subjects of interest to their own markets, and built a programme of signings and readings, especially with southern authors. In November 2016, English Wikipedia says, it began selling self-published books.

Design and documentation.

Bookshop chains and online booksellers present themselves in different places. A chain’s identity is seen first on the street: the name over the shop front, the table displays inside, and the bookmarks, bags and seasonal catalogues handed over at the counter. An online bookseller has no shop front, so its name, its website and the catalogue pages it publishes carry the same work, along with the parcels that arrive at the door.

Store and imprint names are usually plain. Many chains carry a founder’s surname, as Dymocks does with William Dymock, who opened his first Sydney shop in 1879, according to English Wikipedia. Others are coined for the web, such as Booktopia, founded in Sydney in 2004. Older names often survive inside newer businesses: Angus & Robertson became an online brand within Booktopia after a 2015 purchase, SmartCompany reported, and the last Dymocks shop in New Zealand passed to Paper Plus franchisees in 2012, according to Stuff.

Ownership shapes the presentation. Some chains are franchise networks, in which local operators run shops under one name; others are family companies, listed companies or units of larger retail groups. The corporate pages that booksellers publish, and the trade and business press that covers them, set out founders, owners, acquisitions and, where they happened, administrations and changes of owner.

This guide describes each bookseller from dated sources: who founded it, who owns it, and what happened when the business changed hands. Where a chain closed or passed through administration, it says so with the date. The palettes and typefaces shown are our own unofficial interpretations, not the companies’ marks.

A family chain again, since 2015.

The listing did not last. In December 2015 the company was bought by its chairman, Clyde B. Anderson, and his family, which took it private and removed its shares from the Nasdaq, English Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia of Alabama both say. Publishers Weekly, in a report by Jim Milliot dated 28 October 2025, places the chain, often shortened to BAM, within Anderson Media, the family business whose other holdings include fireworks and merchandising companies, and gives its base as Birmingham, Alabama.

The same report, built on an interview with Clyde Anderson, now executive chairman, and chief executive Terry Finley, gives the most recent picture. BAM was opening 15 new outlets in 2025, keeping its total at more than 220 stores across 32 states; many new shops replace older ones or move away from weakening malls. The new stores average about 15,000 square feet and carry manga, collectibles, puzzles and gifts as well as books, with about 60,000 titles per shop under a new interior design. Buying is still done mostly at headquarters, with input from store managers, who can also buy some regional titles. Anderson told the magazine that the chain had grown over the years partly by taking on stores from rivals that had gone out of business, including former Crown Books and Borders sites. Publishers Weekly also reported large author events held away from the shops, one in Philadelphia with 20 authors, and same-day delivery of online orders through a partnership with Walmart. The magazine put the workforce at about 5,000 store staff, a management team of about 300, and another 400 people at a 250,000-square-foot distribution centre.

For a design guide, Books-A-Million shows how one family chain can carry several shop names, from Bookland to 2nd & Charles, under a single short form, BAM. Compare Barnes & Noble, another American bookstore chain, and Half Price Books, a Texas bookseller built on used stock. For this guide we use a brick red, charcoal and cream with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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