Ron, a Published & Profitable member, sent me this link to an article describing several of the top independent bookstores located throughout the United States.
I was familiar with 4 of them, ranked, below, in order of personal ranking:

Tattered Cover Bookstore, Denver, CO
Powell’s Books, Portland, OR
Elliott Bay Books, Seattle, WA
City Light Books, San Francisco, CA

The [...]

Close on the heels of a recent announcement that Borders is testing a series of “concept” stores with increased face-out displays of books, even though this requires cutting the number of different titles displayed in each store, comes an article in today’s Wall Street Journal (Friday, March 21, 2008), discussing a Borders sale to Barnes [...]

An article in the March 12, 2008, Wall Street Journal describes Borders Bookstores decision to display books with front covers facing out poses several interesting challenges and opportunities for authors, literary agents, editors, and publicists. Front covers, as Kathi Dunn and Ron Hobart described on a recent interview for Published & Profitable members, play [...]