Bruce Springsteen was a longshot to visit the Tattered Cover, the 47-year-old independent bookseller with a trio of stores in Lower Downtown, Littleton and on East Colfax Avenue. But new owners Len Vlahos and Kristen Gilligan went for it, knowing exactly what a visit from The Boss would mean for them.
“We pulled out all the stops,” Vlahos said, including filming that featured a continuous, four-minute musical tour of the store with Vlahos on acoustic guitar.
“And it worked,” he said. “A day like that is huge for us, and not just in book sales, which are already big. We had every news network out here, we had 15,000 people trying to buy 1,100 tickets, and we had super happy customers, many of whom may have not have been customers before that.”
Front Range bookstores and libraries have increasingly leaned on marquee names to bring in new customers and cardholders, from politicos such as Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Carter Ի to legendary activist and writer Gloria Steinem and bestselling romance novelist Nicholas Sparks — all with a new book to promote.
