Book Bound

Park Road Books: Charlotte’s oldest indie bookstore

September 16, 2026 Leave a Comment

As the owner of Park Road Books, Sally Brewster buys and sells thousands of books every year. She also reads as many as she can. “Five books a week, on average,” Brewster says, smiling slyly as customers within earshot express shock at her claim.She insists she’s not exaggerating, despite her busy life as owner of Charlotte’s oldest independent bookstore. “My husband does the cooking. I don’t care what the house looks like. I don’t care what the garden looks like…. I read all the time.”

Brewster, 61, bought Park Road Books in 2003 from the late John Barringer, who had owned the store since its 1977 opening (then called Little Professor Book Center) in Charlotte’s iconic Park Road Shopping Center. She had been managing the store for Barringer since 1999, and “he always wanted me to buy the store, but that’s when competition was fierce—Borders, Barnes & Noble, Media Play, seven other indies in Charlotte—so I told him I would see how it went…It took me that long to get the financing.”

Until recently, with the opening of Troubadour Booksellers in east Charlotte, Park Road Books was the city’s only indie bookstore. Its inviting storefront comprises three huge windows, divided into nine squares each, for displaying books and author photographs. Each month, the entryway bulletin board and online newsletter are filled with events, including book club meetings with themes, such as the Banned Book Club, the Geek Book Club, and the Foodie Book Club.

Devoted fans regularly pack the back of the store, sitting arm-to-arm on folding chairs and the comfy sofa or standing among the bookshelves for author talks and book signings. Indeed, the sofa, with its book-themed upholstery, was a gift from a customer. It just happened to match the store’s two upholstered armchairs, which are popular seats for book lovers. Other regular clients have donated rocking chairs (adult size and child-size), and one customer brings a cheeseball for the staff every Christmas season. “Some families we’ve known for four generations,” Brewster says. “We’re on hugging and kissing and crying terms. People bring us their babies. They bring us their puppies. We’re sort of an extended family.”

A graduate of Appalachian State University with a bachelor’s degree in history, Brewster started her career as a sales representative for Random House. For ten years, she regularly called on Barringer and other independent bookstore owners in the Carolinas and Georgia.Today, as the bookstore owner, she meets with five sales reps and does all the book buying, except for children’s books. She leaves that to Sherri Smith, one of the store’s 12 staffers. Those employees, including Brewster’s younger brother and general manager James Brewster, keep the store open every day of the year except for Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. “You can’t sell books if you’re not open,” she says.

Employees are also responsible for a popular feature at the front of the store–a section of shelves displaying books of staff recommendations. Fiction sells best, Brewster says, but “there’s something for everybody. I’m not going to judge you. I’m just glad people are reading.” Although she loves to read and sell books, Brewster has never been interested in writing one. She says her husband, Frazer Dobson, who writes horror stories, teases her about not wanting to be an author. “I am not a writer at all,” she says. “In the time it takes to write anything, I can read a heckuva lot of good books.”

In part to give herself more time to read, Brewster assigns responsibility for organizing the popular author talks to another staffer, Halli Gomez. Guest authors have ranged from nationally known celebrities, such as Pat Conroy, Jimmy Carter, and Anne Rice, to popular local writers, such as Kathy Reichs, Judy Goldman, and Tommy Tomlinson.

Brewster is proud to have survived challenges from chain stores and online booksellers and from the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 and 2021. She credits a $45,000 grant from the federal Paycheck Protection Program for enabling her to pay employees and keep the store operating during the pandemic. Even though she closed the store for in-store customers, it kept going with online and over-the-phone sales. “The phone rang off the hook,” Brewster says. She’s also proud that she covers health insurance premiums, including dental and vision, for employees; partners with Communities in Schools, which provides hundreds of books to Mecklenburg County children; and pays taxes that support the local community.

The mention of taxes brings up Amazon, the popular online bookseller and nemesis of independent bookstores, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos. For years, Amazon wasn’t required to collect or pay state sales taxes, giving it a competitive advantage over bricks-and-mortar stores. Amazon claimed it shouldn’t have to pay taxes because doing so would be administratively burdensome and unfair because the online business, without a physical presence, didn’t directly benefit from tax-funded services. That changed in February 2020 with a new N.C. law requiring online marketplaces, such as Amazon, to collect and remit sales taxes to the state.

Brewster asks authors who want her to sell their books in her store to agree not to mention Amazon in promotional materials. The suggested alternate wording is “books available in stores and online.” Customers who purchase books from independent bookstores are supporting more than the stores, Brewster says. They also help retain work for local authors, lawyers, accountants, printers, banks, and other vendors. “Every time you buy from a corporate entity,” she says, “you’re sending money out of the community.”

Reach Park Road Books: www.parkroadbooks.com; 704-525-9239

Three Questions for Sally Brewster:

Favorite book: “It’s hard to pinpoint a favorite. The one I’ve read five times is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.”

Favorite bookstore besides your own: “I don’t really go to a lot of other bookstores.”

Bookstore dog: Yola, a small brown dog and familiar presence at the store for many years, died Jan. 25, 2025. “She was my baby. I spent more time with her than anyone,” Brewster says. But in 2026, she welcomed a new bookstore dog, Myfanwy (sounds like Tiffany), named after the protagonist in Daniel O’Malley’s 2012 sci-fi thriller, The Rook.

Karen Garloch will discuss her debut novel, Stray Voltage, at Park Road Books, 4139 Park Road, Charlotte, NC, on Oct. 28, from 6:30-7:30 p.m.

Karen Garloch spent forty-five years as a newspaper reporter in Ohio and North Carolina, including thirty years at the Charlotte Observer, where she was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting. Her debut novel, Stray Voltage, won the 2024 Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction from Regal House Publishing. A native of Indiana, she graduated from Ball State University, where she is a member of the Journalism Hall of Fame. She and her husband live in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Troubadour Booksellers: One of Charlotte’s new indie bookstores

September 9, 2026 Leave a Comment

By Karen Garloch

At a time when many people thought independent bookstores were on the decline, Scott Tynes-Miller started a new one in Charlotte. In the nearly two years since Troubadour Booksellers opened in the Sardis Crossing shopping center, he says customer support has proved him right. “I saw what I thought was a void in east Charlotte,” Tynes-Miller says. “Our opening day was huge. We have a wonderful community of folks who are very glad we’re here. It’s exciting to be part of that.”

Troubadour joins Charlotte’s oldest independent bookstore – the nearly 50-year-old Park Road Books – as one of the city’s many options to Amazon, the online bookselling behemoth But Tynes-Miller says he doesn’t view Amazon as a competitor. “It’s more of an environmental obstacle. They are everywhere (and) they’re not going away any time soon….You need to create your niche within the world where Amazon exists.“We offer a level of customer service and customer experience and customer interaction that Amazon can never recreate.” That welcoming atmosphere draws people “to shop here rather than on Amazon,” he says.

Troubadour’s welcoming atmosphere starts with the sandwich board outside, announcing upcoming book club meetings, almost every week.Inside, visitors find a cozy sitting area furnished with a used leather sofa, comfortable chairs, and an old-fashioned typewriter, with blank paper rolled and ready to go. Book lovers can type their own short stories or poems and tape them on poster boards provided.Children are welcome too, as evidenced by the colorful back corner stocked with books, toys, games, and plush pint-sized chairs. The bathroom offers a diaper-changing table and complimentary supplies.

It’s just how Tynes-Miller imagined it should be, recalling the many wonderful bookstores he’s enjoyed throughout his life. “We want to be a place where people come to meet, to spend time, to read, and to congregate. We want to be the community living room.”

Tynes-Miller, 42, moved to Charlotte in 2011, after living for four years in Chicago. A native of upstate New York, he was “bitten by the acting bug” while attending Boston University and Elmira College. Without graduating, he moved to the Windy City for its thriving theater community.“I didn’t break through in the way I was hoping to,” he says. And he eventually followed a friend to Charlotte, where found work as one of four actors in the touring company of Children’s Theater of Charlotte, then called Taradiddle Players.It meant a full-time salary with benefits and a 12-month renewable contract, unusual job security for an actor.He loved the work—and fell in love with one of the other actors, Robin Tynes, who at the same time was starting Three Bone Theater, now in its 15^th season.When they married in 2018, Scott Miller and Robin Tynes merged their names, and both adopted Tynes-Miller. They have a 5-year-old daughter.

Actors in the touring company not only performed the plays, but they also put up sets, took them down, and managed the sound systems. “It was a really hard job,” he says. And after driving around the Southeast for hundreds of performances, “my body started telling me it was time to move on.”Fortunately, he found work in the development department at Children’s Theater, where he managed fundraising. He stayed for 10 years before resigning in 2024 to open Troubadour, fulfilling a longtime dream.“I don’t know when it exactly happened,” he says, about wanting to open a bookstore. “I’ve always enjoyed visiting bookstores. Whenever you go into a bookstore, it feels like a magical place. I wanted to be a part of that. I wanted to create something like that.” It had never felt like the right time until the Covid 19 pandemic in 2020 “when everyone was kind of reevaluating their lives.”“I started thinking about it more actively and talking about it with my wife and some friends. Everyone was very excited and encouraging.”

Despite the widespread impression that bricks-and-mortar bookstores are on the decline, “it was not the case at that time and is not the case now,” Tynes-Miller says. Over the last five years, the number of independent bookstores in the U.S. jumped by 70 percent, according to the American Booksellers Association. In 2025 alone, 422 new bookstores opened, a 31 percent rise from the year before.Troubadour is one of several indie bookstores that have opened in the Charlotte area in recent years. They include Belmont Bookshop in Belmont; Cleary’s Bookstore in Mount Holly; Fred and June’s Books in Mooresville and Denver; Goldberry Books in Concord; Editions Coffee Shop and Bookstore in Kannapolis, That’s Novel Books in Camp North End, and Trope Bookshop selling romance novels in a Plaza Midwood.

Troubadour has already attracted many fans and plays host to 10 book clubs each month. Some clubs just use the store to hold their meetings. Other clubs are moderated and curated by Tynes-Miller or one of his five part-time booksellers.He and his employees, all avid readers, try to collectively read most of the books they carry so they can answer customers’ questions.Tynes-Miller reads about 20 to 30 books a year, not as many as he would like. “I’ve always been a deliberate reader. I like to savor books.”After researching many stores, he made the conscious decision to stock only new books. “We carry a little bit of everything. Our focus is on critically acclaimed adult fiction and children’s books.”

Since opening, the selection has shifted more to genre fiction, a reaction to customer interest. “Romance. Romantasy. Fantasy. Sci-Fi. Horror. Those are all very popular. Romantasy is really the hot genre right now,” Tynes-Miller said.Three of the book clubs that meet at Troubadour focus on horror. “It has become a very popular genre for us.”As a result, he’s trying to read more of the popular books. Recently, he read Buffalo Hunter Hunter, a New York Times bestseller and a 2025 Barack Obama Summer Read by Stephen Graham Jones.“I was not much of a horror reader for much of my life. But I have grown a great appreciation for it. I try to read a little bit of everything.”

Tynes-Miller says he chose the name Troubadour as “a little bit of an homage to my past life, being touring actor.” But it can mean a lot of things, he says. “I like the idea of art being mobile and transferable. That book goes out into the world. It could be donated or sold or gifted. It could end up on the other side of the planet. There is also the journey that people take whenever they read. The metaphor can go as far as you want it to.”

Reach Troubadour Booksellers, (704)443-7076, https://troubadourbooksellers.com.

Karen Garloch will discuss her debut novel, Stray Voltage, at Troubadour Booksellers, 1721-7C Sardis Road N, on Oct. 20 at 7 p.m. The event will be moderated by owner Scott Tynes-Miller.

Main Street Books: A Davidson Community Hub

August 25, 2026 Leave a Comment

By Karen Garloch

Visitors to downtown Davidson are sometimes surprised when they walk past Main Street Books and notice the three-tiered cart stacked with brown bags of paid-for books waiting for pickup. From inside the store, owner Adah Fitzgerald enjoys watching the reactions. “We hear people say, ‘What?!’ They cannot believe it just sits there all day, safe and sound.”

In this quaint town north of Charlotte, where Davidson College students pledge to an honor code, this trusting practice works just fine. Even when the cart has been accidentally left outside overnight, not a single book has been stolen since the system was instituted in 2020. It’s one of the things Fitzgerald loves about operating this independent bookstore in Davidson’s oldest building, a former general store at 126 S. Main Street.

At 47, the 2001 Davidson graduate has owned the bookstore with her mother, Mary Barone of Houston, TX, since 2015. They bought the business from Betty Reinke and Barbara Freund, who retired after running Main Street Books for 27 years. By the time Fitzgerald bought it, the store was already a beloved institution with lots of regulars. And she loved the location, nestled between the Fifth Third Bank and the popular Summit Coffee. At first, Fitzgerald ran the business in much the same way as the previous owners. She even left the dark stain on the original wide plank pine floor where the general store’s wood stove used to be.

The store had a great selection of books, but Fitzgerald had a different vision. “I wanted the store’s focus to be on recently published books. We’ve done a lot of work to build relationships with publishers and hone our book buying strategy and knowledge.” Things were going well. Then came the Covid pandemic. In March 2020, Fitzgerald had to close the store for a couple of months. Loans from the federal Paycheck Protection Program allowed her to continue to pay staff. But they had difficulty selling books because their website wasn’t set up to take online orders. That’s when they started leaving books in the sidewalk cart for pickup by customers who sent orders through Google or called by phone.

In July, Fitzgerald began meeting customers by appointment. Then in 2021, she made the “huge decision” to update her computer to offer a “customer-facing website.’’ Today, new releases get uploaded every night, and customers can order any of them online.That allows Main Street Books to better compete with other booksellers, including Amazon, the online giant and bane of independent bookstores. “Think hard before buying a book from Amazon,” she warned in a 2020 interview with News of Davidson.“Your local shops literally invest in our community… Sales taxes collected from our shop go into local schools and services. Our staff live in our community. Our partnerships with local non-profits put books into the hands of kids who do not have the disposable income to build their own home libraries. Amazon does none of these.”

Owning a bookstore wasn’t always the plan for Adah Walker, who met her husband, Bo Fitzgerald, at Davidson College. She worked as a science teacher at Charlotte Country Day for three years and then spent 10 years teaching middle school and high school science classes at Woodlawn School near Davidson. In 2014, after the birth of their second child, she took a break from teaching. About that time, she saw the announcement that Main Street Books was for sale. Fitzgerald said she and her mother had “playfully talked about owning a coffee shop” one day. Having lived in Davidson before moving to Mooresville, Fitzgerald had been a Summit customer and knew the town didn’t need another coffee shop. But she had “watched what (Summit) had done over 15 to 20 years. So, I knew the potential.”

She liked the idea of owning a business in the heart of town and being part of a growing, thriving community. “Having an established bookstore is really different from starting one from scratch. There was lots to learn. But a very devoted community already,” Fitzgerald says. Today, she employs 15 part-time workers, including store manager Brianne Wik. They are open seven days a week.

Fitzgerald reads about 75 books a year, but some of the employees read 100 to 200 in that time, and they love to give advice about what to read from the 10,000 books in the store. Although its focus is on new releases, the store does not ignore the classics. Displays offer many old, familiar books that have been republished in attractive new packages. From a shelf nearby, for example, Fitzgerald grabs an apple-blossom-covered box that holds the 20^th anniversary collector’s edition of Twilight, a cult classic about a romance between a teenage girl and a vampire. Fitzgerald pulls the crisp hardback out of its lush slipcase and flips open the pages to show how the gilded edges transform into pictures of the two main characters, Bella and Edward. “Isn’t it remarkable?” Fitzgerald says of the end-page surprise. “The book as an object has really become a phenomenon.”

Customers regularly pack Main Street Books for author talks and book signings. They sit elbow-to-elbow on folding chairs or stand among the bookshelves that can be rolled back to make space. The store hosts several such events each month, in addition to book club meetings and story hours for children. Among the most famous authors the store has hosted are humorist David Sedaris, chef and restaurateur Vivian Howard, and Jill LePore, a staff writer for the New Yorker and Harvard historian. For Sedaris’ appearance in 2018, Fitzgerald and her staff set up an outdoor sound system so the overflow crowd could hear from the parking lot.

Last summer, Main Street Books was among the first to host Virginia Evans, a debut author from Winston-Salem, whose novel The Correspondent, went on to reach the New York Times’ bestseller list, mostly by word of mouth. “She hadn’t been quite discovered,” Fitzgerald says. “But we kind of knew where she was headed.” The thought makes Fitzgerald smile because, as she often says, it fulfills her goal to build a “place for writers to meet their readers.”

Reach Main Street Books: www.mainstreetbooksdavidson.com; 704-892-6841. Karen Garloch will discuss her debut novel, Stray Voltage, on Sept. 24, from 7-8 p.m., at Main Street Books, 126 S. Main St., Davidson, NC. She will be in conversation with Pam Kelley, author of Money Rock.

Inside the Frenchtown Bookshop: Five Years of Books, Community, and a Fourteen-Foot Bay Window

August 19, 2026 1 Comment

by Donna Baier Stein

This year, the Frenchtown Bookshop quietly marked a milestone: five years in business. For a town of just over 1,300 people, that anniversary means something. It means a bookstore that could easily have been a passing experiment has instead become a fixture, the kind of place locals build their week around.

I asked owners Scott Sheldon and Barbara de Wilde to talk about how it all started, what they’ve learned, and why a tiny river town in New Jersey now hosts nationally known authors on its stage.

An Unexpected Second Act

Neither Barbara nor Scott set out to own a bookstore. Barbara spent years as a creative director at the New York Times; Scott was a trial lawyer. Both were approaching retirement in early 2020 when Frenchtown’s only bookstore closed its doors. The town, they felt, needed the magic — and the community — that only a bookshop can provide. Barbara already owned the building. The rest, as they say, followed naturally.

You can read more about Barbara’s path from book jacket designer to bookstore owner in interviews with Print Magazine and Magazeum.

Building the Space

Before they could open, they had a building to reimagine. The Bookshop occupies the first floor of an 1863 Victorian, and the couple spent more than a year gutting it. They tore out walls and an old staircase and installed a striking fourteen-foot-tall bay window to flood the room with light. The goal wasn’t just aesthetic. Barbara and Scott believe that browsing for books is best done in a space that’s open, well-lit, and inviting. Their larger mission was even bigger than the store itself: to help revive the cultural life of the River Towns as the region emerged from the pandemic.

Learning the Trade

Neither owner had run a bookstore before, so they literally went back to school. The pair attended Bookstore Book Camp, a hands-on program in Florida devoted to the business side of bookselling. They also spent a couple of days shadowing a bookstore in the Hudson Valley, watching how an established shop actually runs day to day. It’s a reminder that even in an industry built on passion, the fundamentals still have to be learned.

What’s Kept the Store Thriving

Five years in, the Bookshop has grown every single year, and Barbara and Scott credit two things above all else.

The first is curation. Instead of stacking tables with the usual bestsellers, the Bookshop leans into worthwhile literary fiction, a deep selection of nature and garden titles, small-press books, and serious offerings in history, biography, self-care, and social science. It’s a selection built for readers who want something a little more considered.

The second is programming. The store hosts roughly 125 events a year — author visits, poetry readings, book clubs, and writers’ group gatherings — all designed to pull readers into the life of the shop, not just its shelves.

The centerpiece of that programming is the Frenchtown Literary Festival, held for the first time this summer. With support from a grant from American Express, the festival brought Elizabeth Gilbert, Roxane Gay, Ian Frazier, Ross Gay, and Padraig Ó Tuama to town — a remarkable lineup for any venue, let alone one in a mile-square town. Events filled the 400-seat auditorium of the century-old Frenchtown School, drawing hundreds of area residents together to celebrate literature and, in the process, cementing the Bookshop’s role as a genuine cultural anchor for the River Towns.

Finding the Right Books

Stocking a store like this takes more than instinct. Barbara and Helen stay in constant contact with publishers’ sales representatives, who know the shop well and help steer them toward titles that fit their readership. On top of that, the two read through stacks of advance copies and keep close tabs on book-industry publications and websites.

Staying Connected Between Visits

The Bookshop’s relationship with its readers doesn’t end at the register. Its weekly Constant Reader newsletter offers four themed book recommendations each week. These may be anything from novels inspired by The Odyssey to books for sports fans to a roundup of Booker Prize winners, along with a rundown of upcoming events. That same Constant Reader spirit extends to the airwaves, too, with a semi-monthly book-recommendation segment on WDVR community radio.

A Town Bookstore, Done Right

Five years on, the Frenchtown Bookshop is proof that a well-loved local bookstore isn’t just about selling books. It’s about creating a space where a community wants to gather. Between the light-filled Victorian storefront, the thoughtfully chosen shelves, and a festival that pulls major literary names into a school auditorium, Barbara and Scott have built something Frenchtown clearly needed.

Donna Baier Stein is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, poet, and playwright. She is the recipient of the PEN/New England Discovery Award, Foreword Reviews Winner, Bread Loaf Scholarship, Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars Fellowship, Iowa Fiction Award Finalist, and more. Her work has been featured on NPR, PBS, Washingtonian, Saturday Evening Post, O Magazine, and elsewhere. Highlights of Donna’s career have been seeing one of her short stories performed by Tony Award winning actress MaryAnn Plunkett at the Playwrights Theatre and four of her plays read at the Salmagundi Club in Manhattan and at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.

Elliott Bay Book Company: Choosing People Over Platforms

July 14, 2026 Leave a Comment

by Scott Lambridis

The first thing I noticed walking into Elliott Bay Book Company was the sense of openness. For such a large bookstore, it’s surprisingly easy to see the whole thing at once. Tables sprawl, tall shelves circle the room, and a wide wall of staff picks rises like a monument, a collective conversation among serious readers. It feels less like a store than a public reading room.

Near the front, another section draws its own attention: a rotating display of local authors, a reminder that the literary world Elliott Bay supports isn’t abstract, but rooted in the city around it. That feeling fits the neighborhood. Elliott Bay sits in Seattle’s Capitol Hill district, one of the city’s most eclectic and politically engaged areas: queer, artistic, multilingual, full of street life and independent culture. The bookstore feels entirely at home there.

That sense of openness has been part of Elliott Bay from the beginning. Founded in 1973 in Pioneer Square, the store set out simply to be a great general bookstore, a place where anyone could find a book. “From the beginning it was meant to be this very large bookstore,” events manager Sofia Brekkan told me, “for everyone and anyone.”

That commitment to breadth has never changed. Elliott Bay carries the big titles, but their shelves are full of small-press books, literature in translation, and authors whose work rarely appears in chain-store displays. It’s refreshing to see a store that’s chosen depth over dominance. “If I have any goal here,” Sofia explained, “it’s to bring up voices who aren’t traditionally centered—queer authors, trans authors, writers of color, writers from other countries.”

The real infrastructure behind that mission, though, isn’t the books. It’s the people. Elliott Bay is famous for its long-tenured staff. Some employees have worked there for decades. One bookseller named Rick has been with the store for more than fifty years. He isn’t an owner, but within the literary world his presence is legendary. Publishers, authors, and longtime readers still come to Elliott Bay partly because Rick is there.

Events are where that network comes alive. When I spoke with Sofia, we sat in the downstairs event space, rows of chairs facing a simple lectern. On any given night, it might hold a debut novelist, a local poet, or a major literary voice. The store hosts 400 to 500 author events each year, sometimes several in a single day. Debut writers, local poets, major literary figures—all pass through.

Some nights the room fills; others draw smaller crowds. But the scale is less important than the consistency. The expectation is that something is always happening, that the conversation between writers and readers is ongoing. “Authors are the heart of bookstores,” one bookseller told me. “They’re the reason any of this exists.” That commitment feels especially meaningful given Elliott Bay’s location: Seattle, the hometown of Amazon. It survives by offering what the algorithm can’t. “People come in and say, ‘I want to shop where there are real humans,’” Sofia said.

Inside the store, those humans form smaller circles within the larger one. Some book clubs have been meeting for so long that members now spend holidays together. Readers return not just for the books, but for the people they’ve met. At a moment when reading competes with endless digital distraction, Elliott Bay continues to make a simple promise. The door is open. Come in, browse, and stay awhile.

Scott Lambridis is a novelist based in Bellingham, Washington. A former indie press founder, performance series organizer, olive farmer, and progressive rocker, he studied neurobiology at the University of Virginia, earned an MFA from San Francisco State University, and read a book from every country in the world. His debut novel, St. Ulphia’s Dead, is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing on July 7, 2026. Learn more at scottlambridis.com

Books Inc.: Choosing Survival

July 2, 2026 Leave a Comment

by Scott Lambridis

Books Inc. has survived by reinventing itself for 175 years.

Founded in 1851 in the Gold Rush town of Shasta City, the bookstore eventually migrated to San Francisco, survived the 1906 earthquake and fire, changed owners several times, and even published Mark Twain in its literary journal Overland Monthly. Today it’s recognized as the oldest bookstore west of the Mississippi—older than Wells Fargo.

But its most consequential reinvention may have happened just last year.

When I spoke with Anita Levin, Senior Marketing and Events Manager, she was still processing the news: after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2025, Books Inc. had been acquired by Barnes & Noble.

For a bookstore that had long been synonymous with Bay Area independence, it was not an easy decision. Independence matters deeply to readers and booksellers alike. But survival matters too. The deal allowed Books Inc. to keep its leadership, staff, and identity intact while gaining something brick-and-mortar bookstores increasingly need: back-end support. Greater flexibility with sales, pricing, and buying power made it possible to keep the doors open. “Really very little has changed,” Levin told me. “We’re just really, really happy to still be here.”

That sense of persistence runs through the company’s history. Over nearly two centuries, Books Inc. has repeatedly reshaped itself around the communities it serves.

Like the Bay Area itself, each location develops its own microclimate. In San Francisco, children’s titles dominate. In Mountain View, romance is huge. In the South Bay, business and tech titles move fastest. The stores reflect their neighborhoods as much as any centralized merchandising strategy.

The atmosphere follows the same philosophy. Staff recommendation cards cover the shelves. Handmade signage and displays lean into what Levin jokingly calls a “DIY, punk-rock ethos.” The goal is to create a space where human enthusiasm replaces algorithmic recommendations.

“Bookstores are a place to escape an algorithm,” she said. “It’s people loving something and showing you they love something.”

That spirit extends to community programs. Junior Booksellers initiatives introduce middle-school volunteers to the trade. Author events and book clubs draw readers together in physical space. Bookstores have to remind people to seek out that kind of IRL togetherness again after the pandemic, Levin says. “You can’t undersell the impact of Amazon,” she said plainly. Fixed book prices, thin margins, and expectations of fast shipping have transformed the economics of the industry. But Books Inc.’s response has always been the same: stubbornness. “We’re just not willing to see it end,” Levin said. “That kind of wasn’t an option.”

Which means the bookstore will keep adapting—throwing parties, hosting authors, curating shelves, and inviting readers back into the room. After 175 years, survival isn’t just the story. It’s part of the brand.

Village Books: A Community That Happens to Sell Books

June 16, 2026 Leave a Comment

By Scott Lambridis

At first glance, Village Books seems to be doing a little too much. When I first moved to Bellingham, Village Books was one of the first places I discovered, and it immediately felt like something special. Set on a busy corner in Fairhaven, the city’s historic sister district, it feels less like a single storefront and more like the center of a small literary village.

The store anchors a lively corner of Fairhaven, with Paper Dreams next door, its companion shop of gifts, crafts, and small curiosities, and the Colophon Café downstairs, a longtime partner just steps away. Behind the building, a wide-open village green unfolds, hosting summer film nights, craft fairs, and community gatherings that feel, in practice, like part of the bookstore itself. A statue of Mark Twain stands just outside, as if keeping watch over it all.

The bookstore itself spreads across multiple floors: an event space downstairs with rows of chairs and a lectern; the large, open Next Chapter Café upstairs, nestled beside the Writers Corner and balcony; an open path into the adjoining gifts and crafts shop. There’s also dedicated space highlighting book clubs, writing groups, a publishing program, and partnerships with local nonprofits and schools.

Most bookstores would see this kind of expansion as dilution. Village Books sees it as the point.

When I spoke with co-owner Sarah Hutton, one principle surfaced again and again. “The mission, from the beginning, has been building community,” Sarah said. “It becomes less of a transaction and more of building, strengthening that.”

Community is not a branding or a programming choice, but infrastructure for Village Books. And once you notice it, you start to see it everywhere in the store. The café invites people to stay longer than a typical retail space might encourage. Square footage that could easily hold more books instead holds chairs, tables, and room to gather. When I bring my family, I often get lost in the shelves, chasing down staff picks, while my daughter slips into Paper Dreams to find treasures of her own. It can be hard to tell where one space ends and the next begins.

Community isn’t singular for the store either. Village Books talks about many communities, layered together. “Our staff is our community. Our customers are our community,” the team explained. Beyond that are the neighborhoods the store serves—Fairhaven and Lynden—as well as schools, libraries, nonprofits, and other local businesses.

Staff aren’t just employees here; they are the primary stewards of the store’s culture, shaping what’s on the shelves, how people are welcomed, and the feel of the space. That long view becomes especially clear over time. Village Books has been operating for forty-five years, long enough to watch entire generations of readers pass through, “The kid who was rummaging around in board books is now looking at grown-up books,” said Sarah. “Watching that is so nourishing.”

Writers are part of that cycle too. Village Books hosts an extensive network of book clubs and writing groups, runs a small publishing program, and supports emerging authors through initiatives like Chanticleer Reviews. The path from reader to writer is not abstract here—it’s visible, local, and ongoing. “Those are the future authors who are going to stand at this lectern,” said Sarah.

None of this is particularly efficient in the traditional retail sense. Event spaces sit empty between readings. New writers don’t always sell out rooms. Partnerships take time. But Village Books treats those choices as investments rather than inefficiencies. The effect is recursive. Each group feeds the others, reinforcing a system that’s larger than any single part.

The bookstore’s longevity suggests the strategy works. After forty-five years, Village Books hasn’t survived by optimizing transactions. It has survived by cultivating relationships between readers, writers, staff, and the wider community that gathers around it. In the end, that’s the store’s quiet secret: Village Books isn’t a bookstore with a community. It’s a community that happens to sell books.

Henderson Books: A Marriage Built Out of Books

June 9, 2026 Leave a Comment

by Scott Lambridis

Henderson Books in Bellingham is the best used bookstore I’ve ever encountered, full stop. The volume and selection are unmatched. I’ve never made it through the fiction stacks in a single visit. On my last trip, I lingered far too long among the largest collection of Fay Weldon books I’ve ever seen, and it’s one of the only places I’ve been able to slowly piece together the hilariously philosophical Grooks volumes by Danish poet Piet Hein. A friend in the Bay Area once flew up to Bellingham on a pilgrimage, only to find the store closed for vacation—possibly for the first time in a decade.

But if you were to linger after hours and overhear a conversation between the owners, you’d likely see Robert, who founded the store, looking around at the towering shelves and saying something he’s apparently been saying for decades. “Let’s just quit.”

His wife Barbara—his partner in the store and in life—answers the way she always has. “No quitting.”

It sounds like a joke, but it’s also the operating philosophy behind one of the most remarkable used bookstores in the Pacific Northwest: a labyrinth of some 350,000 used books, stacked floor to ceiling in narrow aisles that feel both carefully negotiated and slightly contested.

“He wanted the aisles narrower,” she once said. “I wanted them wider. I got my way, mostly.”

Their partnership is written directly into the store.

Before Henderson Books existed, Robert lived something closer to a wandering reader’s life. In the 1950s and ’60s he drifted around the country, sometimes riding freight trains, rarely staying anywhere long. He never finished school, but he read constantly, buying books at garage sales because they were the only thing he could afford.

One day he sold a book back to a store and was startled by how much they paid him. The realization stuck: you could make a life out of books.

For years he followed a pattern: working for a while, saving money, quitting, reading, and occasionally opening small used bookstores that would last until a landlord or neighborhood change pushed him somewhere else. Bellingham was not supposed to be permanent. When he arrived in the mid-1980s, he brought what he called “the best fifty boxes” from a closing shop in Seattle and opened a small used bookstore downtown. Then a woman walked in. She was looking for a book.

They married around 1990. She kept her job at the post office for a time, but eventually joined him full time in the store. When Henderson Books moved into its current building in 1994, they built the shelves together with help from woodworking friends who practically lived in the space for months. The boards all still show their planer marks.

The design philosophy has remained simple: let the books create the atmosphere. There are no reading couches, no coffee bars, no decorative flourishes competing for attention.

Just books. A lot of them.

Running a used bookstore that size is not romantic work. Inventory arrives in unpredictable waves. Sections expand and contract. Entire walls slowly migrate outward as the collection grows. Through all of it, their roles have remained remarkably consistent. Robert brings the instinct of a lifelong reader. His rule is simple: never assume a book is valuable (or worthless) until you’ve looked closely.

His wife brings something else: steadiness. Over the years, whenever Robert has suggested closing the shop, she has answered the same way. “No quitting.”

Which is why Henderson Books still stands today, forty years after it began, less a business plan than a long-running conversation between two people who built a life, and an extraordinary store, out of the same stubborn promise, a promise, thankfully, still being kept.

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