Sue Zumberge, manager of Common Good Books, St. Paul, Minn., responds to yesterday's letter from "Miffed in Michigan":

As manager of Garrison Keillor's bookstore, I think it is important to point out that Common Good Book's overhead includes my and another manager's salary, etc. As a former bookstore owner, I would have thought of that salary as money I was making on the store. And while I agree that bookstore owners will never get rich, I am forever grateful to "non-dedicated" bookstore owners such as Mr. Keillor here in St. Paul and Louise Erdrich in Minneapolis who allow us "dedicated" bookstore managers to serve our very dedicated bookstore customers.

I am more drawn to Mr. Keillor's comments about the loss of bookstores and the ability to hold books in your hand and page through them, the wonderful smell of books and so forth. I am aware that part of our function as bricks and mortar stores is to act as showrooms for Amazon but does that blunt the joy of discussing a wonderful book (or for that matter an awful one) with a customer who has just finished reading it? We book people are addicts in our way, Garrison Keillor no less than the rest. He was just willing to put up the funds to feed his habit to the betterment of his community.