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Books Inc.: Choosing Survival

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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.

Scott Lambridis

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 

Village Books: A Community That Happens to Sell Books

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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.

Scott Lambridis

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 

Henderson Books: A Marriage Built Out of Books

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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.

Scott Lambridis

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