Independent bookstores are multiplying, although many people still think
they're dying out
[May 28, 2026]
By HILLEL ITALIE
NEW YORK (AP) — Allison Hill, CEO of the American Booksellers
Association, is used to strangers expressing sympathy when they learn
what she does for a living.
“It's all so funny,” she says. “When I tell them I run the trade
association for independent stores, they'll say, 'It's just so sad that
they're disappearing.' I don't think they're really keeping track, or
they just know about a store that closed or heard about one closing.”
The decline of physical bookstores remains so embedded in popular
culture that the man dating Anne Hathaway's character in “ The Devil
Wears Prada 2 ” laments that bookstores are “getting downsized and
consolidated.” But the decline actually ended years ago, and the latest
numbers from the American Booksellers Association show independent
stores expanding at a pace not seen this century.
Membership in the ABA grew by more than 500 over the past year, to a
total of 3,417 (at 3,783 locations), nearly triple what it was a decade
ago and the highest level since the late 1990s. The surge included
stores of various kinds — general interest shops like Hey Books! in San
Diego; mobile stores like the Wandering Quills Bookshop in Westerville,
Ohio; pop-up stores like Banyan Books in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Many of the new members reflect the current boom in romance, fantasy and
their hybrid, romantasy, whether the Spicy Librarian in Denver or the
Flutter Romance Bookstore in Austin, Texas: “Where butterflies begin.
And every story ends in happily-ever-after,” according to its website.
Both a business and a calling
Independent bookselling, rarely a way to get rich, is a meeting ground
for idealists — for young people with a sense of mission, retirees
embarking on a new life or middle-aged people no longer satisfied with
their careers. “I think people want to realign their lives with their
values,” Hill says.
In Wentzville, Missouri, 55-year-old Kelley Hartnett is a marketing
consultant and copywriter who had always wanted to run a bookstore. Her
husband's concerns included competing against Amazon, but Hartnett went
ahead and opened Double Dog Bookshop in 2025 as a mobile store. She rode
about the area in a converted cargo trailer, joined by two Australian
Cattle Dog mutts, and has since opened a storefront downtown.
“For me, Double Dog is about maybe 50% books and 50% community,” says
Hartnett, who hopes to find a larger space that would make it easier for
customers to gather and “just be.”
“People are craving connection, especially in-person connection,” she
said. “People are over the internet and virtual meetings and algorithms.
They're not the same as having a human to human connection. It feels
really healing.”
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Kristen Quanrud, left, and Anne Hampton, owners of Wandering Quills
Bookshop, pose inside of their mobile bookstore in Columbus, Ohio,
on April 12, 2026. (Matt Deaton/Wandering Quills Bookshop via AP)
 Hill can joke about the mistaken
elegies for bookselling, while expressing concern that the state of
independent stores is healthy but “precarious.” Costs are high, and
schools and libraries face budget cuts that limit their purchases
from local stores.
Is there room for indies and giants?
Independent owners also find themselves worrying about a onetime
competitor which itself had seemed endangered, Barnes & Noble.
The superstore chain was the dominant seller in the 1980s and 1990s,
and was widely seen as the leading cause for hundreds — maybe
thousands — of independent stores shutting down. But by the 2010s,
Barnes & Noble had been surpassed by Amazon. It began shutting down
stores instead of opening new ones and struggled for years to find a
new owner before the hedge fund Elliott Management Corp. bought it
in 2019.
Under the leadership of CEO James Daunt, Barnes & Noble is expanding
again, adding more than 100 stores over the past two years. In
Chicago, the owner of the decade-old Volume Books has blamed a new
Barnes & Noble for putting her out of business, while Hill added
that “even a small decrease in sales can make or break a bookstore’s
year in an industry with paper-thin margins.”
Daunt denies any intent to take business from independent sellers,
saying it's not in his “DNA.”
“I'm an independent seller myself,” he says, noting that he founded
Daunt Books in London. Daunt says he has customers who shop at his
store and the British chain Waterstones (where he's also managing
director). “I never thought of the market as finite.”
The owners of The Book Loft Oak Park, another Chicago-area store
that opened last summer, acknowledge some nerves about a nearby
Barnes & Noble coming soon. But Heather Nelson and Sophie Schauer
Eldred hope the stores ultimately complement each other.
“We’re hoping people whose curiosity is piqued by the new Barnes and
Noble will walk down the street,” Schauer Eldred said, “and pop into
our bookstore.”
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