Volume selling? Powell wrote the book on it : In Portland, purveying the printed word pays off bigger than ever despite the advent of computers.

Considering all the concern about the decline of reading and the too-easy urgency of electronics, who can explain, please, how it is that great bookstores survive today at the threshold of the 21st Century?

Better, who can explain Portland, the Mr. Medium of U.S. cities, and how a contender for America’s greatest bookstore not only survives here, but thrives?

Certainly not Michael Powell, proprietor of Portland’s transcendent Powell’s Books. “Buy two, sell one?” he jokes, weakly.

Yes, it seems, bookseller Powell harbors a dread about running out of books. So, in 21 years he has expanded his store until it now covers a full city block with 43,000 square feet in eight separate wings, apparently the largest in the country. By his count, there are about one million volumes on hand, also apparently without equal in the United States.

If everybody in Portland, America’s 30th largest city, bought one book, Powell’s would retain nearly 60% of its shelved inventory.

No one is known to have verified these numbers or Powell’s place in history. But it is easy enough to verify such things as the 273 feet of shelf space devoted to British history, or the generous stock of Barbara Tuchman translations in such languages as German and Portuguese, or the selection of Sanskrit literature.

By the way, it is reporters and local residents, not Powell, who engage in this record-book stuff. If he cared about such things and was challenged, for instance, by Denver’s 40,000-square-foot Tattered Cover, Powell could raid his three reserve warehouses and almost certainly bring more books to market than any other store.

But Powell does not profess to care so much. Anybody with money can buy lots of books and a place to sell them, he says.

What he does care about, what makes Powell’s the most celebrated retailer in the city and what gives the store such vitality, is a philosophy that mocks precepts of pop culture and protocols of corporatism.

Consider the business views of store manager Miriam Stontz: “We decided never to underestimate the intelligence of our readers. If someone from a university press is selling a book on, say, deconstructionism, we’ll take 10 copies. We figure there are 10 people at least in Portland who are interested in the subject. . . . We find that our customers never ask for less, they ask for more.”

Powell’s stocks first novels likely to sell only two copies in a year. It will carry a history volume and demand even less turnover. It will display a novelty book on seasickness called “Why Bring That Up?” just to prove it has a sense of humor. Powell’s was a pioneer in mixing paperbacks and hardcover, now commonplace in bookstores, and it shelves used and new books together, still a rarity.

The result is resplendent. A Hemingway buff can find “For Whom the Bell Tolls” in first editions (two volumes, one slightly better than another), in a second printing of the first edition, in reprint hardbacks, in leather gift-bound gift edition, in trade paperback and in pocketbook. There are 10,000 poetry titles, three aisles of theology. And so on.

But is big really better?

Anybody who has grown dizzy at a used book store knows the answer is, not necessarily.

So the first thing a visitor will notice is the hyper-organization. The store hands out folded road maps of its collection (it once was a car dealership) and publishes for new customers a 34-page field guide (paperback only).

Over the years, Powell’s has become more than a store. It’s a social hangout, with a coffee shop, children’s play area and 20-plus readings or literary events each month. The singles columns in the Portland alternative weekly use the store as a form of self-identification, as in: “I like hiking and Powell’s.”

Employees are lured to Portland from other cities by employers citing Powell’s as proof of the city’s cultural qualities. Oregon schools send children from hundreds of miles away to tour the store.

Unable to contain all the customer’s needs under a single roof, Powell’s expanded with specialty shops for travel and cookbooks, and it opened an outlet in the airport. Every time someone suggested that reading was dead, it seems, the check-out line grew longer.

“They said the computer was going to end reading. All it did for me was give me another bookstore--this one on technical and computer books,” laughs Powell.

No future satellite Powell’s is planned. Chain stores apparently have caught on to the lesson of Powell’s, and the coming trend in America, Powell says, is the chain “super store,” 12,000-square-feet and larger.

So the rundown-looking warehouse next to a brewery in downtown Portland is braced for a new challenge in the age of TV--more and larger bookstores.

To Michael Powell this is good news about America. “Just look out on the floor here. We’ve got all types. Young and old, we’ve got people with green hair, whatever. They’re not all reading Tolstoy. But Tolstoy didn’t always read Tolstoy. They’re reading, even those who start by reading the cereal box in the morning.”