April 25, 2025, 10:00am
Tomorrow, Saturday 4/26, is Independent Bookstore Day! And while every day can and should be Independent Bookstore Day (stop buying books from Amazon, stop linking to books on Amazon, stop posting the Amazon sales and the B&N sales on your social media), it’s nice that we have a dedicated holiday to celebrate all the great things that your local indie does for your community. This year, over 1600 stores will be participating across all 50 states, with events and author signings and giveaways and parties and so much more—a truly impressive show of indie strength. It’s almost like reports of the bookstore industry dying are… made up? Exaggerated? A convenient fiction propagated by Amazon to justify their predatory monopoly? But that’s an issue for another day.
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Today, we’re here to celebrate the bookstores we love—so here are some (some!) of the Lit Hub staff’s odes to beloved indies. Let us know your favorites, too (and make sure you tell them you love them while you’re at it).
The Word is Change
The Word is Change
Brooklyn, NY
The Word is Change is my neighborhood indie bookstore, and also happens to be my favorite. It’s my absolute go-to for everything I need, bookwise. They have new popular fiction, they have radical political texts, they have an enormous collection of used books (many of which once belonged to me, thank you Alexander for buying!) It’s a dream and a privilege to have such a great local bookstore just down the street, and is instrumental to making my neighborhood feel like a community. –Julia Hass, Book Marks Assistant Editor
Buxton Books
Buxton Books
Charleston, SC
The best reading I ever did was in Charleston, South Carolina, a city where I don’t know anyone. Generally speaking, if you’re a first-time writer whose book hasn’t been anointed by any major book clubs, readings in unfamiliar cities are, at best, sparsely attended. Not so at the incredible Buxton Books, which, in addition to being a completely lovely store with an excellent range of books, knows how to throw a reading. People walking by came in off the street and then asked thoughtful questions during the Q&A. There was laughter. There was wine! The people who work at Buxton are generous, hilarious, and of course, book loving, and they made me a rabid fan of the store for life. –Jessie Gaynor, Senior Editor
Village Well Books & Coffee
Culver City, CA
I love Village Well because it’s my little sister’s local. We live across the country from each other and don’t get to see each other that often, but from the minute this place opened, I felt like I had a line to her through Village Well. Obviously we talk on the phone and stuff but if you know what I mean, you know what I mean: it’s different to have a sense of being connected through not only books but through a bookstore. I’ve since visited a few times (including a few weeks ago to see their still-newly-expanded space) and it makes me feel like she and the community in Culver are being well taken care of indeed. –Drew Broussard, Podcasts Editor
Bruised Apple Books
Bruised Apple Books
Peekskill, NY
The first used bookstore I remember going to, and the first I fell in love with, was Bruised Apple Books in Peekskill, NY. I don’t think I was a natural “Used Book Guy.” The idea of book that was worn and beat-up cut against my youthful fussiness — I tucked in all of my shirts until well into elementary school, for example — but the idiosyncratic sections at Bruised Apple fascinated me. The store and its quirky shelving and notes rewarded wandering and browsing in a new way for me, beyond the consumerism of the mall bookstore or the directed research of the library. There were vast intellectual worlds out there, and each time I became interested in something, Bruised Apple offered a shelf of well-thumbed books to explore. I got a book on Stonehenge, a too-intellectual study on the historiography of dragons, and my first short story collection, if memory serves.
When you see a whole shelf of books on a topic you’ve never heard of, or four copies of the same book by an author who is brand new to you, it humbles you in wonderful ways. The Bruised Apple didn’t so much expand my world as much as it shrunk my own sense of what I knew.
Beyond the books, Bruised Apple was one of the places where I grew up too. I went there with my parents and saw what books they were picking up. I went there with crushes and experienced self-conscious and flirtatious shared browsing for the first time. I went there with one friend who bought a Smash Mouth CD and then wept the whole ride home because it was the wrong album, while his mom tried to soothe him and I sat in silence. And Bruised Apple was one of my earliest encounters with the thrilling feeling that there was so much to read, and so much I hadn’t read. Whenever I’ve been back, I’m impressed by their selection. I know nothing about the process of sourcing, culling, and curating used books, but the Bruised Apple continues to do a great job: there’s always something new to see. — James Folta, Staff Writer
Charlie’s Queer Books
Charlie’s Queer Books
Seattle, WA
Charlie’s is a perfect little gay dream of a bookstore. All the books are queer and all the walls are pink! What more could you ask for! I love going to Charlie’s to check out their great book selection, read in their cute upstairs reading nook, and gossip with the book sellers. Charlie’s also hosts a lot of very cute community events like book clubs of every genre, writing groups, craft circles, and drag story time for kids. It’s just cute! I’m really grateful to have a bookstore this gay and wonderful in my city. Everybody say thank you Charlie!! –McKayla Coyle, Publishing Coordinator
Three Lives and Company
Three Lives & Co.
New York, NY
I’ve got an embarrassment of indie bookstores to shout out in New York (and Kingston–looking at you, Rough Draft). But one place that makes me very happy is Three Lives & Co in the West Village. A very dear friend and store regular introduced me to this place, and it’s sort of the perfect bookstore. It’s cozy, but lovingly curated by a fleet of absolute reader rockstars. (The seasonal staff recommendation newsletter is unparalleled.) Doesn’t hurt that it looks from the outside like one of Charles Dickens’ sweeter conjurings. There’s these big windows, and a fetching red awning. It feels quintessentially New York, to the extent that if you’re classy about it, there’s some very fun people-watching to be done in that (one, single) aisle.
My friend and I have a standing date where we go to Three Lives and pile up on off-the-beaten paperbacks and then dash across the street to Julius to catch the end of happy hour. We call it our ‘Toni and Fran time,’ and never do I feel more literary. –Brittany Allen, Staff Writer
Autumn Leaves
Autumn Leaves
Ithaca, NY
Autumn Leaves in Ithaca, NY has been and remains my favorite indie bookstore some fifteen years running. Its recent acquisition by the proprietors of PM Press—which you can hear more about in this episode of the Lit Hub podcast—has injected its shelves of used books with some new titles from the leftist press mixed in among the majority-secondhand offerings. Everything you’d want a bookstore to be: a place to host community events, a spot where you can plop down in a raggedy armchair and read undisturbed for a few hours, a shop that somehow always has an inexpensive copy of that novel someone recommended to you just last week, Autumn Leaves is it. –Calvin Kasulke, Associate Publisher
The Seminary Co-op
The Seminary Co-op
Chicago, IL
I have been to the Sem Co-op only twice: once when it was a deliriously convoluted underground bookstore in the basement of the Chicago Theological Seminary, and once in its current incarnation, a light-filled (read: above ground) space a block away, where the store moved in 2012. I love bookstores, but as someone who reads and writes about books for a living, I am rarely surprised by what I find in them (this is especially true for new bookstores). But through some specific magic, in both iterations of the Co-op, on visits a decade or more apart, by some organizational (or disorganizational) magic, I found books I never knew I always wanted. No small feat! –Emily Temple, Managing Editor
Rough Draft Bar & Books
Rough Draft Bar & Books
Kingston, NY
Well I mean I’m biased, I guess: I’m also the bookstore manager for this spot. But the thing is, it would probably be my favorite store in the world even if I wasn’t—or to put it another way, I’m the bookstore manager here because I love this store so much. Jonny Diamond once called this store one of the best bookstores in the world and who am I to disagree? (I would like to think that our curation will now satisfy Bookforum subscribers, but that’s between me and Jonny to hash out.)
But in all seriousness, the thing I love about Rough Draft is that it is more than just a bookstore. Yes, there’s a charm to wandering into a space densely packed with books, books, and more books (and okay maybe some sidelines like cards and keychains and notebooks and what-not) — but the future for bookstores is, I think, in true third-space territory. By way of example: Rough Draft features a truly world-class coffee program spearheaded by Josh Rosenmeier, a top-flight beer menu curated by Dan Fiege, bread and pastries from sister shop Kingston Bread + Bar, big old windows that let in the light of the world without letting (much) of the elements inside, and a cheery cast of staff and regulars alike who make the place feel… well, like a place you want to be. I know the names of those people not just because I work with them, but because Anthony and Amanda Stromoski (owners of RD and KBB) have made it a point that everyone should know everyone, because that’s what community is all about. Rough Draft is a gathering spot, a satellite office, a movie theater, a pub, a café—and, oh yeah, a bookstore. Come see me some time, I’ll hook you up. –Drew Broussard, Podcasts Editor
The Buzzed Word
The Buzzed Word
Ocean City, MD
No summer is complete without a trip to the beach, and no trip to the beach is complete without a visit to The Buzzed Word!! My friends and I always plan at least one (and usually more than one) visit to this amazing bookstore/natural wine bar on the Atlantic coast. The drinks (both alcoholic and NA) and snacks are delicious and the book selection is so choice. I always leave with a few really cool books I’d never heard of and a few more books that I’ve been looking for forever but never see at bookstores. Going to The Buzzed Word is one of my favorite summer rituals. Beach reads forever! –McKayla Coyle, Publishing Coordinator