With stores moving out of SoHo and the Uptown gallery areas, you might expect them to be moving into Chelsea. But so far that hasn’t really been the case. Peter Kraus runs a second location in Chelsea, which he admits was opened in a fit of optimism and has not been as profitable as he had hoped. Gallery owner Paula Cooper opened a store, 192 Books, on Tenth Avenue in Chelsea, which though it carries an array of art-related books is not specifically dedicated to them.

In a more peculiar development, the popular Williamsburg shop, Spoonbill and Sugartown, will be opening a Manhattan branch in SoHo – on Lafayette between Broome and Spring Streets – in spring 2005. Miles Bellamy, whose father was the late art dealer Richard Bellamy, focuses on contemporary art and recently signed on the former book buyer from the New Museum as a partner. But Mr. Bellamy sells many other books besides art books (including poetry and philosophy), whatever appeals to his own taste. A current big seller is “Grow Your Own House,” about bamboo architecture.

The void in Midtown will be somewhat filled with the return of MoMA’s bookstore, which has been closed since the museum re-located to Queens. When it reopens on West 53rd Street on November 20, it will carry 2,000 titles in the MoMA Design and Book Store as well as a smaller space dubbed MoMA Books upstairs with 1,500 titles chosen by curators.

And downtown Strand should have some 500,000 books – including Hacker’s stock and those it had in its own inventory – available come this fall. The thick hardcover art books are much more profitable than the paperback books that make up most of the Strand’s sales. The traffic in the store and the fact that the Strand is a volume business also give it a chance to compete on price; the Strand art books on the new floor will come with 25%-80% discounts off the list prices, Ms. Bass said.