HARRISBURG, Pa. - It's not often the motorcoach industry sees the likes of Larry Portzline.
That's because Portzline is the leader of a one-man crusade trying to convince motorcoach tour and charter operators they should embrace a travel concept he has developed called Bookstore Tourism.
To Portzline's way of thinking, Bookstore Tourism and the motorcoach industry is a marriage made in bus heaven.
In the past year, Portzline has led what he says were six sold-out motorcoach charter trips to independent book stores in distant cities. "We had three very successful bookstore adventures this spring - two to Greenwich Village and our first ever to Washington, D.C.," he reported the other day.
"The indie bookstores in the Georgetown and Dupont Circle neighborhoods (of Washington) are incredible, and I highly recommend them to anyone who's going to be paying a visit to the nation's capital anytime soon. The support I've received from the booksellers in these two locales has been wonderful."
Portzline, who teaches literature part time at Harrisburg Area Community College and writes full time for the Pennsylvania State Senate, uses his spare time to organize busloads of bookworms to travel to independent bookstores. The trips usually include a dinner, allowing the book lovers to discuss their day of adventure before heading back home.
The goal of Portzline's single-minded zeal is not to drum up business for motorcoach operators - though it does that - but to do what he can to help save independent books stores, which may be disappearing faster than independent coach operators.
Independent booksellers face enormous competition from three sources: the giant book retailers, like Barnes & Noble and Borders; the big discounters like Wal-Mart, and from the Internet and the likes of Amazon.com, E-Bay and a host of others.
Portzline, who has developed a Web site, BookstoreTourism.com, to help him push his avocation, got a major surprise (and boost) in May when USA Today selected his Web address as a "hot site."
He also is building partnerships with various organizations that are interested in adapting Bookstore Tourism to fit their specific needs, including libraries, coach companies, book festivals on the East Coast, a large university, and "the fantastic booksellers in a small southern city who'd like to draw busloads of literary patrons into their community."
Portzline gets notes of encouragement from across the U.S. -- even a few from other parts of the world. "Booksellers, educators, librarians, travel professionals and booklovers in general see a lot of potential for Bookstore Tourism, and they've been very generous in their enthusiasm, praise and well wishes," he says.
The prolific Portzline has even written a book, which he calls a manifesto, on why booklovers should support independent bookstores; what Bookstore Tourism is all about; who should participate; how to go about organizing a trip; how to research a city and its bookstores; how to plan other activities for the trip such as a presentation, meals, entertainment, author readings, tours and the like; how to create materials for the trip; how to publicize the trip; how to work with travel agents, bus companies, booksellers and restaurants, and what can go wrong.
The book can be downloaded from Portzline's Web site. He hopes to self-publish it in the fall in a paperback edition.
He calls the book: Bookstore Tourism: The Book Addict's Guide to Planning & Promoting Bookstore Road Trips (for Bibliophiles & Other Bookshop Junkies).
"I really hope motorcoach operators will consider embracing Bookstore Tourism," says Portzline. "There's so much potential here. If you could see the folks who go on these trips with us, you'd know exactly what I am talking about. This is an untapped travel niche, and you really ought to take advantage of it."