Peterborough-based Toadstool Books has acquired Alran Books, a distributor of professional education titles and trade literature based in Harrisville.

Alran, which was founded by longtime Monadnock region resident Allison Weber (formerly Randall ) in the 1990s, distributes titles from over 350 publishers. The company specializes in professional education books, trade literature for teachers, parenting books for teachers and educators, and curriculum materials.

“This is very different from retail, but it will diversify and enrich what the Toad is already doing. It will expand and grow the great relationships we have with local schools and local educators,” said Emerson Sistare, owner and manager of Toadstool Books. “We will now be able to provide those specialty titles to our educators.”

According to Sistare, Toadstool and Alran will be partner companies, but with “separate and distinct” businesses. Weber plans to stay for a three-year period to assist with the transition.

“We are so happy Emerson is going to be taking over,” Weber said. “We think this will be a great fit for Toadstool’s mission and their role in the community.”

Sistare said he became interested in Alran books after meeting Tim Ditlow, a locally-based, internationally-known children’s book and media consultant, at an event at MacDowell. Ditlow told Sistare about Alran, and Sistare became intrigued.

“Hearing about what Alran offers, I knew this would diversify our offerings at Toadstool and give us more opportunity to serve our local schools and to serve individual educators. A lot of retail stores won’t sell specific education titles, but we can offer titles with depth or breadth,” Sistare said. “We already have a lot of local educators coming to us for literature and trade titles, and now they can come to us for professional titles as well.”

“Our goal has always been to match the best and most appropriate book for each teacher. Alran has the best selection of education titles in New England,” Weber said.

According to Weber, a large part of Alran’s business is bulk sales to both public and independent schools, as well as to universities and state departments of education.

“We’re hoping to able to work with the local public school districts for bulk sales. We already have great relationships with some of the independent schools, and we have a lot of teachers who come in individually to get their trade books and their literature, for all age groups,” Sistare said.

After the acquisition was completed on Aug. 30, Sistare and his staff moved Alran’s inventory to a “book room” space in the basement of the New Guernsey building, where educators will be able to peruse educational trade and professional books and materials in person.

Weber said she is thrilled about the new, centrally located space for Alran Books.

“Teachers would stop by Alran on the way home from work to see what we have, or they may need help with something very specific and they want to see what titles we have in that area. Sometimes they need something for the next day,” Weber said.

Sistare said a physical book shop is vital to Alran’s mission, and echoes the longtime mission of Toadstool as a brick-and-mortar shop.

“Shopping online for titles like these in particular is just not the same. We wanted to have a space where educators can go an actually page through these books, open them up and read them and compare titles. There are workbooks, examination copies — things that are hard to compare online, ” Sistare said.

Sistare said educators and parents looking for titles in specific subject areas should contact him to arrange a time to check out Alran’s new book room.

Ditlow said that Alran is unusual, as one of only 25 major distributors in the educational book arena.

“Amazon is not in this business yet, and most of these titles are not available at book stores. Without family-owned companies like Alran, educators would not be able to get books like this; they would not be able to get the best, current titles in the industry,” Ditlow said.

Sistare and Weber credited Ditlow with helping craft the sale.

“We are so grateful Tim was able to give this deal his full attention; his help has been instrumental and his knowledge of industry is invaluable. There was a lot to think about putting this all together,” Sistare said.

Alran is also well established in the conference books business, running bookshops at education and writing conferences around New England.

“Conferences provide huge exposure for writers and publishers and helps get the books out there,” Weber said.

Sistare said the conference bookshop business is another way the two businesses are aligned, as Toadstool has been partnering with local organizations to provide book-selling services at local events.

“We’re very collaborative with local organizations. We’ve worked with the Harris Center, we’ve worked with MacDowell, and we are working on an event with the Peterborough Players,” Sistare said. “We did an event for Heather Cox Richardson with 650 people which was really exciting. ”

Despite taking on new responsibilities, Sistare says he will still be full time at the Peterborough Toadstool store.

“I’ll be putting off getting a dog for a while,” he jokes. “But this is such an exciting opportunity and building on what we were already doing. We are just so incredibly lucky to be here in this area and have the opportunity to meet people like Tim and Allison, and to have the support of this community.”

For more information about Toadstool and Alran, please go to: https://toadbooks.com/.