Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Bibliophiles, unite!
Local indie bookstores thriving post-pandemic
Buying books in our digital world is easier than ever before. At our fingertips lie increasingly quick and simple ways to get the latest story, especially from behemoths Amazon and Barnes & Noble Booksellers, with ebook devices and apps, audiobook services and those listservs that alert big readers to fleeting deals, ways to nab books at super low prices and then start reading or listening right away from their smartphones.
The many options have, yes, overall led to a decline in the number of bookstores open nationwide. Some sources say that number is roughly half what it was in 1997. And when you classify by independent bookstores, well, it’s no longer a given that there will be a non-Barnes & Noble bookstore option in any given city.
But in Northwest Arkansas, we do have a variety of independent book shops.
Avid readers go out of their way to support these local institutions, which provide community in the form of book clubs, author events and the simple but effective personal connection of recommendations and discussions about your next good read.
TWO FRIENDS
In 2018 Monica Diodati and Rachel Stuckey-Slaton booked the community room at Onyx Coffee Lab in Bentonville for two days, laid out something like 150 or 200 books and sold them to people passing through.
Many of the titles were from their personal collections, things they had read or that friends and family previously owned, as well as a few donations. It was mostly used books, and they were priced with little tags of paper taped on the back with numbers handwritten on them.
The whole production was a way of floating the possibility of something they had long discussed as members of the book club that started their friendship: the opening of an independent bookstore in Bentonville, which didn’t have one at the time.
“The idea of a pop-up event was low stakes, and we did it a few times,” says Diodati. At the time she was missing The Wild Detectives, a bookstore/bar/venue in Dallas, a place that she frequented when she lived in the area. She describes it as a sort of second living room, where you could grab a glass of wine and sit down to read.
Diodati was surprised to find that doing pop-up book sales felt good and not scary, unlike what she imagined at the time opening a storefront might be like. “We were not retail bosses,” Rachel Stuckey-Slaton says with a laugh. They weren’t tracking inventory yet, and neither had a retail background, so they were facing a huge learning curve as they dipped their toes in to the ecosystem of bookselling. A small press in Dallas sent Diodati and Slaton a box of bestsellers, giving them a chance to expand their selection without being on the hook for too much money if they didn’t sell it all. “They were like ‘Here, take these and sell them; we love what you’re doing and hope you can have a store one day,’” Stuckey-Slaton recalls. The small presses wound up being ideal partners because they shared in the work of lifting author voices, she says. After a few pop-ups, the pair established a semi-permanent space by taking over a little nook at the front of Airship Coffee in Bentonville.
“There was a group that was excited to have a bookstore in Bentonville, and it gave us confidence from customers being great and supportive,” Diodati says. The biggest supporters would call and request things they hadn’t outright offered yet, like a custom-curated basket of books to gift to a coworker, for example.
Meanwhile, they got a lot of help learning the ropes of the supply chain from previous booksellers, like Lisa Sharp of Fayetteville’s beloved Nightbird Books, and existing bookstores, such as Common Place in Oklahoma City. They created accounts with publishers, joined the American Booksellers Association and learned the backend, the more business-oriented aspects, on the fly.
Having a regular place to sell their books opened the gates for more community-driven events, starting with a Saturday morning story time for children, open mic nights, poetry workshops and author readings.
Two Friends made the leap to Southwest B Street in Bentonville, securing a small brick and mortar all their own, just as the pandemic went into full lockdown, but they found that it didn’t affect their sales negatively.
“The industry did really well. People were stuck at home and wanted to pick up a book again,” Stuckey-Slaton says. Adjusting for safety measures meant that only two people could safely browse the shop at a time, and they asked every customer to wear a mask. Stuckey-Slaton and Diodati made good use of the breezeway next to their shop and built out a patio/ deck to allow for safer gatherings.
They also began the Sospeso board, an Italian tradition of paying for a friend’s coffee or book and leaving it at the shop to collect at their leisure, as a way to keep people connected even while they were distancing.
This year, Two Friends moved into its largest location yet as a part of the 8th Street Market, where they doubled their shelf space. They also have a presence at other locations around town, including the library at Blake Street and curating sale selections for Bloom Flowers and Gifts and BRIKA and Wylde Pop-Up.
“The most exciting was the (change to) the kids’ area,” Diodati says. “We have so many families with kids that the demand was there. We had such limited real estate before that it’s nice to have a whole area where kids can lay on a rug and read … or a 12-year-old can sit at the (coffee) bar and finish the next in a series.”
PEARL’S
One year and a couple of months ago, Leah and Daniel Jordan were preparing for Pearl’s Books first day. The bookstore was set to open on Oct. 2 on Center Street in Fayetteville, just off the downtown square, but they felt a very welcoming sense of anticipation and went ahead and opened their doors in mid-September.
“We were in the ‘it’d be fun to…’ stage for years,” Daniel Jordan says. “We had dreamed about something like this. We thought ‘Maybe when we retire … or never.’”
The pandemic changed the Jordans’ mindset. The married couple were working from home, and it changed everything they were thinking about their careers. They were both academic advisers on the University of Arkansas campus, and while they enjoyed the work and the people around them, they’d been in the gigs for a while.
Being out of the office altered the perspective of what their working lives could be. It made Daniel Jordan think maybe it was just the right time to try out a dream job — but not without a little convincing.
“Leah has always been the dreamer in the relationship who compels us forward,” he says. “It’s easy for her to visualize and take action.” But Daniel, the more pragmatic one, was slower to come around. “I’d never owned a business before. I wanted to stay in my comfort zone.”
Leah’s vision for a shop, paired with the pandemic lending a perspective for the big picture and the closing of Nightbird Books, all converged and gave Daniel confidence that Fayetteville needed a new bookshop.
What they wanted to create, aside from more autonomy over their own lives, was a community space.
“We wanted to feel enmeshed with the community, part of something bigger than ourselves, but still put our stamp on it,” Daniel Jordan says. Local authors contacted them, and events immediately fell into place. “That was a surprise for us … with not a lot of outreach. They found us, (which was) proof that we needed this. We weren’t forcing anything to happen; it was a very natural thing.”
Leah Jordan found their current location while driving around to soothe their baby. The space that had previously been the olive oil shop Cask and Grove seemed just right: a little removed from the square but still close enough to high traffic areas; not too big; with good accessibility.
Figuring out which books to carry was more difficult because there are so many options. Narrowing it down felt a little overwhelming at first, Daniel Jordan says. Pearl’s found directional help and a supportive community in Two Friends, Wordsworth Books in Little Rock and other bookstores around the country.
“We’re getting better (at selections) as we figure out what people like and trends in what people buy,” not just nationwide bestsellers, he adds.
The four other people on staff help add variety to what books they order, since they each have their preferences and what they know well. Leah’s strong genres are historical fiction, high fantasy, cookbooks and children’s books. Daniel enjoys memoirs, horror, literary fiction and anything character driven.
Being the one to categorize books within the appropriate genres is really one of the most challenging aspects of having a bookstore, Jordan says, second to bookkeeping, of course. Once he realized that the business of deciding what genre a book goes in is purely marketing, the task got easier. If he thinks it might sell better in a different category, off it goes.
In their first year of operation, Jordan says they’ve seen a lot of literary fiction, local books, romance, scifi and fantasy fly off the shelves. Their customers include more young adults and college students than they imagined, too.
As they continue to learn and grow in the bookselling business, the Jordans delight in being a puzzle piece in the community of local readers.
“We’ve met that goal of wanting it to be a place that people think of when they think of reading and gathering together,” Jordan says. Baby showers, wedding showers and even a wedding have taken place at their shop.
“We’re not an event center, but the fact that people think of us to do that means there’s a connection that people are already forming with Pearl’s. Continuing to grow that is really important.”