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.
