Pirates_Ghost

Debbie Bowie makes a living by helping others organize their desks and closets, and when she heard about feng shui, it seemed natural to incorporate the Chinese art of arranging objects into her business.

Bowie was, after all, the only feng shui organizing consultant in Richmond, Va., and she wanted potential customers to know.

"I was listed in the Yellow Pages under organizing services, but there were no listings for feng shui," Bowie said.

A sales representative for the phone company tried to talk her into a second listing under "interior design," but that didn't seem to describe her business. So Bowie persisted, and her request for a new heading in the phone book was granted.

New versions of the Yellow Pages--including the more than 1.1 million 2005 Chicago SBC Yellow Pages now being delivered to area residents and businesses--include such new headings as Botox, body piercing, paintball, satellite equipment and teeth whitening. Gone in most cases are discos, while others like toupees barely hang on.

The first phone directory appeared in 1878 in New Haven, Conn., two years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Yellow paper to indicate business listings appeared five years later. According to phone industry lore, a printer making a directory ran out of white paper and used yellow instead. The color stuck.

R.H. Donnelley Corp., which last year paid $1.42 billion to acquire SBC Communications Inc.'s directory publishing business in Illinois and northwest Indiana and became the fifth-largest printer of Yellow Pages directories, printed the first Chicago-area directory in 1886, according to the company.

And in the 119 years since, times and the book have changed as party lines gave way to cellular phones and Internet calls.

"Society tells us what the book should look like," said Jim Palma, marketing director for the directory publishing business of Verizon Communications Inc., which is based near Dallas. "It's a living record of what's going on in society."

As more categories were added over the years, the Yellow Pages directories grew in size and as a business. The Yellow Pages industry currently accounts for more than $14 billion in annual advertising sales, according to R.H. Donnelley, which estimates it pulls in $1 billion in directory advertising each year.

Verizon's information services unit, which includes online directories but is primarily an old-fashioned Yellow Pages, has annual sales of more than $4 billion. It faces five large rivals, including Donnelley, and scores of smaller players, most of whom are publishers and not phone companies.

Many Web sites also offer directories of personal and business listings. Search engines run by Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. grow ever more powerful, and Amazon.com Inc. offers online Yellow Pages.

Then there are cell phones. Some services, including ones offered by the phone companies, will point a cell phone user in the middle of Manhattan to the nearest florist or pharmacy.

Phone companies say their books will survive the Internet because they're handier than a computer when sitting at the kitchen table. Online advertising is growing more rapidly, up to 20 percent a year compared with the low single digits for U.S. Yellow Pages, but the phone books bring in twice the revenue, according to research firms.

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