A Side Hustle for Some Published Authors: Bookseller

The writing life fulfills many authors, but some have embraced another aspect of the literary life as well — operating independent bookstores. Their shops are located in cities large and small in Alabama, California, Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, Tennessee and Texas.

What's their motivation? "If you've loved books your whole life, it's an absolute thrill to work in a bookstore," legendary author Judy Blume told Next Avenue. "I do love putting out the books, keeping track of them, making displays and most of all, of course, meeting and helping customers."

In 2016, Blume and her husband, George Cooper, opened Books & Books in a nonprofit community arts center in Key West, Florida. "We learned on the job and never looked back," said Blume, 86. "It's incredibly hard work. Some people think it must be the ideal job for someone who loves to read. Actually, we have less reading time than we had before, because we're so busy."

Blume, the focus of the film "Judy Blume Forever," works at her store three days a week when she is in town. "So many customers recognize me since the documentary aired, and it's wonderful to chat with them and lead them to new books they may like," she said. "But it's also fun to help people who have no idea who I am. Then I feel like a true bookseller."

Here, in alphabetical order, are some of the authors who own bookstores: Jhoanna Belfer, a Filipina-American poet, owns Bel Canto Books in Long Beach, California. Birchbark Books & Native Arts in Minneapolis belongs to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Louise Erdrich. Novelist Lauren Groff owns The Lynx in Gainesville, Florida, while novelist Kristen Iskandrian heads up Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama.

Young Adult author Leah Johnson is at the helm at Loudmouth Books in Indianapolis, Indiana. Jeff Kinney, author of the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" series, co-owns An Unlikely Story in Plainville, Massachusetts. Memoirist Jenny Lawson, known for her honesty about mental health, founded the Nowhere Bookshop in San Antonio, Texas.

Award-winning short story maven (and debut novelist this year) Kelly Link owns Book Moon in East Hampton, Massachusetts.

George R.R. Martin, author of "A Game of Thrones" (and much more), owns Beastly Books in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee, is co-owned by prolific novelist Ann Patchett. Novelist Emma Straub co-owns Books Are Magic in Brooklyn, New York.

Some of the stores stock general inventory, while others specialize in specific genres. The LibroMobile Arts Cooperative in Santa Ana, California, highlights books written by Latinx, Black and Indigenous individuals and other people of color. Sarah Rafael García founded the nonprofit store and arts center, and serves as volunteer executive director.

"When the only bookstore in our region closed in 2015, we knew we had to have one, so a year later, we opened LibroMobile," said Garcia, 50. The author of a memoir and SanTana's Fairy Tales, a required text in the Santa Ana Unified School District, Garcia also has co-edited several anthologies, is a visiting scholar at California State University, Fullerton, and is writing a book about Modesta Ávila, a feminist icon and the first convicted felon in Orange County, back in 1889.

LibroMobile opened as a pop-up, selling books and hosting free readings and workshops through partnerships in art spaces, with local businesses and at public events. The shop now has a small bricks-and-mortar space, but Garcia said pop-up events and donations help with the bottom line.

"I have to work with numbers instead of words, especially now that we have lost two grants, so we are still super mobile and constantly looking at how we'll stay open tomorrow," Garcia said. "Community colleges invite us for Latino Heritage Month, we go to book fests, we host a literary arts festival, we do book release events for academic titles and we pop up in museums, even alleys. All these opportunities give us a buying audience, and people who donate books for our ethnic studies and social justice collections."   

Josh Cook, 44, is the author of "The Art of Libromancy: On Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-first Century" — a series of pointed essays — plus a detective novel. He also is co-owner and marketing director of Porter Square Books, with locations in Boston and Cambridge.

Each week, Cook spends two days in his role as marketing director and three days working floor shifts. "Most people who come into the store are not aware that I've written books," Cook said, "but sometimes I'll see someone read one of my back covers and look over with an expression of 'Holy cow, that's the guy.' That's always fun."

Cook knew from the age of 16 that he would be a writer. He has a few writing projects in the works, but with a toddler at home, he admitted that time is tight. He'd been a bookseller for 11 years when his first novel was published. During a gap in his professional life, Cook realized a bookstore would be a good place for a writer to work.

"Being on the inside helped me get my books published, helped me have realistic expectations and also helped me be emotionally prepared for the way the world would receive my book," he said. "One thing I'd love to see in the literary world is much more time spent on teaching young writers about the business side of bookselling. It's hard to teach a lot about writing, but there are time-tested strategies for authors in terms of the business."

In the acknowledgements section of "The Paris Hours," Alex George's seventh novel, he penned this: "Booksellers are superheroes, and every last one of them deserves a cape and their own Marvel franchise." Nine years ago, George, a lawyer, founded the Unbound Book Festival in Columbia, Missouri. In 2017, he met with experienced bookseller and writer Carrie Koepke, and they opened Skylark Bookshop a year later. She now manages the store.

"Only after I became a bookseller have I really begun to understand the devotion and smarts that are needed to succeed at what is simultaneously a quixotic and utterly necessary undertaking," said George, 54. "With the possible exception of my children, opening the shop is the best thing I've ever done."

A native of England, George compares bookstores to an apothecary. "People come here with ailments, in need of cheering up or maybe they have a specific wish, and we give them what they need to cure them," he said. "The only thing better than the joy of putting the right book into the right person's hand is when they come back later and tell you they loved it."

Owning the store also has provided George with "an additional dimension to the business side of my writing life." Because of downtime in his law practice during the pandemic and "more virtual  meetings since then," George has finished writing one new book and completed half of another.

Up until mid-October, George was at Skylark every day and worked three floor shifts a week. He and his family now live in Boston, but George remains responsible for the inventory.

"What goes on the tables define shops to some extent, but our defining characteristic is about community," George said. "We've thought hard about how to participate, and that's why we hold fundraisers, make donations to softball teams, help with auctions, hold open mic nights and celebrate local writers. That's absolutely integral into who we are."

Whether or not a writer owns a bookstore near you, independent booksellers across the country maintain that shopping local offers benefits over buying online or in a big box store. "That's especially true if you want something more than a book you already know about or the one everyone is reading or the book your mom tells you she wants for Christmas," Cook said.

"Independent bookstores offer a narrow path through the rich, wide and deep world of literature and human experience, one where people can recommend a book you didn't know you needed — and that personal touch changes the value of the interaction."

Patricia Corrigan is a professional journalist, with decades of experience as a reporter and columnist at a metropolitan daily newspaper, and also a book author. She has written for Next Avenue since February 2015. Read more from Patricia at latetothehaight.blogspot.com. Read More