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Couple closing the book on a popular venture

Carl and Marilyn Jacoby are retiring and will shutter Just Books, their used book business.

By JEREMY HAYES
Published April 19, 2006

TAMPA - The University of South Florida is losing one of its nearby landmarks.

"We're an institution," said Carl Jacoby, who with his wife Marilyn owns the used bookstore Just Books. "We've been here for 20 years, as of April 3."

After two decades in the used book business, the Jacobys are retiring.

Nestled in a plaza between a butcher and a barber, the Fletcher Avenue store is unassuming on the outside. On the inside, however, visitors are greeted by Hemingway and Vonnegut, Hawthorne, Plato, Ovid, Poe and Faulkner, to name just a handful, neatly lined on shelves hand-built by the Jacobys.

They refuse to sell the store, despite at least four good offers to buy.

"We made a promise to ourselves that when the time came, we were going to give everything back to our customers," Jacoby said.

To that end, they have marked every single book in the store half-off.

"Besides, this place is our baby," Jacoby said. "We want to keep our good name. You don't want to work building a place up for 20 years and sell it to someone who will destroy it in six months."

They have 90 days to leave the property, but anticipate their entire stock being sold within 60 days. Anything left will be donated to charity.

"It's just time to retire," said Jacoby, who would only say that he and his wife are both over 65. "This is nerve-racking for us, and it's going to be really hard not coming into work, but things change and we'll get by."

The Jacobys started in the used book business 24 years ago, selling in flea markets and at USF's Bull Market, an open-air marketplace on the Tampa campus. The couple opened Just Books four years later.

"We put everything into the store, risked everything, and put every single penny back into the business at first," Jacoby said. "We lived out of suitcases for a little while."

The hard work certainly paid off. This year, for example, Jacoby said they were the only used bookstore in the area that didn't lose money.

"It's because our customers are fiercely loyal," he said. "We have people that started coming here when they were in high school, and now they're introducing us to their kids. And I can't even count how many weddings we've been invited to."

Part of the store's success also lies in the unusual variety of genres covering its maze-like shelves, which covers not only the normal glut of romance and crime novels that fill most used bookstores, but expands into classic and contemporary literature, psychology, education, history and, Jacoby boasts, contains "the most extensive science fiction section in the state of Florida."

The store has also been a haven for USF teachers and students alike, who have frequented it to avoid campus bookstore prices.

As for what the Jacobys plan to do with their newfound leisure time: "Lots of fishing and gardening, and we're going to get to know our grandkids."

Just Books is at 2002 E Fletcher Ave.

Jeremy Hayes can be reached at 813 269-5302 or via e-mail at jchayes@sptimes.com

[Last modified April 19, 2006, 01:57:07]