The quiet return of the corner bookshop
Independent bookstores opened faster than they closed this year. Here is what the survivors are doing differently.
For a decade the story was simple: the corner bookshop was finished. This year the numbers say otherwise. More independent bookstores opened than closed, and most of the new ones are small, specific and stubbornly local.
The owners I spoke to this week share three habits. They stock fewer titles and know every one. They host something almost every night. And they treat the shop as a place to linger, not a warehouse with a till.
None of this is new. It is simply what bookshops did before they tried to compete on price.