Athens is a host to many small businesses that are well-known in the community. One of those businesses is the Little Professor Book Center, located at 65 S. Court St.
The first Little Professor Book Center was opened in 1967 in Columbus by brothers John and George Gaylord. The company quickly spread through the country with 16 states home to at least one Little Professor Book Center.
They were the first franchisers of independently owned bookstores and Athens is fortunate enough to house one of them.
The Little Professor in Athens has been open and locally owned for 25 years. Since then, it has been passed to a few different owners. In 2018, Nicholas Polsenelli bought the store when the previous owners were looking to sell. Before that, he had been working as an employee at the bookstore.
“I just wanted to see the bookstore continue,” Polsenelli said. “I wasn't sure that people were going to want to pick up that torch. But, I did.”
For the past five years, Polsenelli has been working to make Little Professor more than just the community bookstore.
Around two years ago, he began hosting different game nights that are open to anyone who wants to participate. Some nights the store is open for people to come in and play different board games and other nights they host different magic role-playing games.
More recently he has started hosting an introduction to role-playing games once a month.
“We go through a different role-playing game, here's kind of what it looks like, and here's an introductory one-off kind of a session of what it means, here’s why it's cool,” Polsenelli said.
Three years ago, he also added a recommendation shelf that held not only a few of the recent big sellers but also personal recommendations from the employees of Little Professor so customers can get to know the people who work there.
“It was something I had always wanted to do when I started working here,” Polsenelli said. “It gets people to learn a little bit more about us and our preferences and what we think are good titles.”
He began including a book of the month in the section about a year ago. The book of the month is always something each employee has read and has believed to be a worthy read.
Little Professor houses a wide variety of books both fiction and non-fiction. Its more popular genres recently are romance and fantasy because of a few popular authors releasing new books.
“A lot of times it's actually more specific authors within those genres,” Polsenelli said.
There is usually a rise in sales if an author in a specific genre has recently released a new book. This year, there has been a rise in interest in fantasy because of the new book, “House of Flame and Shadow” by Sarah J. Maas, a popular fantasy author.
Little Professor makes it a priority to stay on top of new releases. It receives over 50 new books from a variety of genres and authors every month. It also takes requests from customers if they are looking for a specific book that they do not have in store.
Whether someone's interests are gardening, reading about a faraway place or playing games with their friends, Little Professor has something for students and locals alike.
This Saturday at 5 p.m., it’s hosting the role-playing game “Call of Cthulu” for anyone to join. More information about the event can be found on its Facebook and Instagram @littleprofessorathens.
“I think that having a larger community that's interested in books would always be a good thing,” said Polsenelli.
