Let’s just get this out of the way: I love big-box bookstores.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Before you question my locavore bona fides, let me clarify: I love all bookstores — big, small, used, new, chain, independent — because I love books. (Ask me what I’d take to a desert island, and I’ll tell you it’s Maud Hart Lovelace’s complete Betsy-Tacy series.) I tend to be pretty egalitarian in my book acquisition standards. And to my mind, any brick-and-mortar store with local employees is better than a faceless digital monster.
Given a choice between shopping in a quirky indie or a “soulless” corporate giant, yes, I’ll take the singular experience of the indie, especially in Vermont, where the “buy local” ethos is so deeply ingrained. So on my most recent birthday, my husband knew that a copy of the free Vermont Bookstore Tour 2024-25 Passport — humbly printed from our home computer and wrapped up with an offer to accompany me to all 20 independent bookstores listed thereon — was the perfect gift for this book nerd.
Launched a decade ago, the passport invites you to visit bookstores in all corners of the state. I’ve traveled to nine on the list so far (see “Passport to Paradise,” page 29), and my experiences have certainly reaffirmed the benefits of shopping locally, including cozy ambience, eclectic inventory and interactions with passionate booksellers.
To my mind, any brick-and-mortar store with local employees is better than a faceless digital monster.
The tour got me thinking about the enduring appeal of physical bookstores, including the mega ones. In the mid-1990s, I worked at the South Burlington Barnes & Noble — first in the Staples Plaza, then at its current superstore on Dorset Street. During my tenure, that store was largely staffed by smart, well-read lit lovers who found joy in putting books in people’s hands. I met my husband of 20-plus years there, as well as many coworkers I count as close friends to this day. I still belong to a book club that formed among the employees more than 25 years ago.
It may be difficult to believe that William Barnes and Gilbert Clifford Noble were real people helming a small bookshop in the early 1900s. (So were Tom and Louis Borders in the 1970s; their store became the now-defunct Borders chain.) By the time of my bookselling career in the ’90s, the effect of the expansion of these and other chain bookstores on small indie shops had been swift and, in many cases, devastating. Aggressive discounts and vast inventories prompted a David-and-Goliath comparison, immortalized in the 1998 Meg Ryan-Tom Hanks rom-com You’ve Got Mail.
The South Burlington B&N was usually bustling from the moment the doors opened — and it stayed open until 11 p.m. every day except Sunday, a tough schedule for smaller shops to compete with. It was so busy that I recall days, usually at this time of year, when the long line at the registers would meet the equally long queue from the café in a commercial version of a Greek dance.
Among the Burlington stores that shuttered as a result were Everyday Bookshop on College Street and Chassman & Bem on Church Street — where a bookseller once wouldn’t let me leave without buying his recommendation, Pam Houston’s Cowboys Are My Weakness. Even the local outlet of the Borders chain on the Church Street Marketplace ceded to its crosstown rival and closed in 2011. By then, Amazon’s tentacles were already curling around every facet of American life, including B&N’s book-market dominance. A retail transformation that we’re still assessing today was well under way.
Chris Morrow, then owner of Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, told Seven Days in 2011, “It’s not so much chains versus locals these days but online versus bricks and mortar.”
Indeed, Barnes & Noble, the only nationwide bookstore chain left in the country today, almost seems like one of the little guys when you consider the online juggernaut that is Amazon. Half of all books sold in the U.S. are purchased through Jeff Bezos’ behemoth, which, almost unbelievably, started as a digital marketplace for books only.
And yet.
After years of declining sales and store closures, B&N’s foot traffic is up 7 percent since 2019, according to location analytics company placer.ai. Though clearly not as busy as in its heyday, the South Burlington store shows signs of replacing some of the blankets, candles and other tchotchkes that filled the front of the store in recent years with actual books. When making purchases this year, I’ve occasionally waited in a short line, which rarely happened in the past decade.
The primary factor in the chain’s renaissance? New CEO James Daunt — the savior of British book chain Waterstones — has adopted the indies’ playbook, eschewing publisher-paid placement and planograms in favor of letting each of his 600 stores curate its own inventory, tailored to the community in which it operates.
“These big retailer bookstores have failed to hang on to their customers because they weren’t friendly, they didn’t have the right books and they weren’t engaged,” Daunt told the UK’s Guardian in 2023.
Oh, the irony.
Independent stores have not stood idly by. Many now use the American Booksellers Association’s IndieCommerce platform to run their own e-commerce-enabled websites in an attempt to elbow their way in with the order-from-home crowd, and they increase their visibility through social media such as TikTok’s #BookTok.
“We want to be available to our customers wherever they want to meet us,” Becky Dayton, owner of Vermont Book Shop in Middlebury, told me. Keeping up with the times pays off: Her store is celebrating its 75th anniversary, and she is only its third owner. According to the Associated Press, membership in the American Booksellers Association has almost doubled since 2016, with 200 new members in the past year alone.
Among the benefits that independent booksellers have always offered are service, curation and vibe. Amazon’s algorithm has its “frequently bought together” feature, but unless you’re looking for more of the same, it can’t duplicate the enthusiastic left-field recommendations of a bookseller who loves what they’re selling, or the exquisitely voyeuristic pleasure of seeing what someone else is browsing or buying.
In a 2022 article, the New York Times touted brick-and-mortar stores’ ability to offer “incidental discovery,” something that’s more difficult, and not nearly as much fun, on a website. “The more Amazon’s market share grows, the less discovery there is overall and the less new voices are going to be heard,” one independent publisher quoted in the story predicted.
And good luck getting Amazon to find a book when you don’t know the title or author. In my bookselling days, it was a badge of honor to locate a requested book from such thin descriptions as “I heard about it on NPR a month or two ago” or “It has ‘horse’ in the title, and I think the cover is blue.”
In many ways, Barnes & Noble and independent booksellers find themselves in a state of détente, united against their common enemy. That same 2022 New York Times story, headlined “How Barnes & Noble Went From Villain to Hero,” cited the chain’s still-sizable orders, which keep the printing and distribution of physical books viable for publishers even as Amazon’s algorithm promotes cheaper e-books. Those large orders also ensure books are available to indies.
Barnes & Noble has coexisted with independents in the Burlington market for 30 years, and the chain’s CEO has publicly declared that the model of more than 2,500 indie bookstores is its way forward, if that coexistence is to continue. Time will tell if the corporate giant can truly relinquish control to local employees or if it will revert to its previous monolithic uniformity.
My recent tour of some of Vermont’s indie bookshops served up plenty of that quirk, curation and “incidental discovery” that B&N hopes to replicate. I follow the Icelandic tradition of giving a book and a chocolate bar to almost everyone on my Christmas gift list, and the first legs of my tour were well timed for holiday shopping. Printed passport in hand (you can also pick one up in any of the 20 featured shops), I hit up bookshops from St. Albans to Brattleboro, from the eclectically organized the Eloquent Page to the left-leaning Everyone’s Books. And, yes, I’ve been to Barnes & Noble a few times in between my indie tour stops. My mom and I love to meet in the café and leaf through magazines — the store has one of the only remaining newsstands in the area — over cups of coffee.
Because I’m rooting for all the brick-and-mortar bookstores. In a world where incidents of book banning are increasing, every book sold is a victory — a blow against ignorance. More books in more people’s hands is a good thing, in my opinion, even if the transaction takes place online, but please, allow yourself the joy of interacting with a fellow reader when you spend your book bucks. Grab your passport and head to a bookstore near you.
Passport to Paradise: A Book Nerd’s Vermont Bookstore Tour
The Vermont Bookstore Tour Passport was the brainchild of a former employee at Vermont Book Shop in Middlebury, owner Becky Dayton told me. It launched about a decade ago and was rejuvenated this past spring with a new itinerary of shops. To participate in the current edition, stores had to be a member of the New England Independent Booksellers Association and contribute a small amount toward the program’s costs. Claire Benedict, co-owner of Bear Pond Books in Montpelier, estimated that more than 100 people participate each year, including occasional vacationing out-of-staters.
If you visit all 20 stores by February 2026 and submit your completed passport, prizes include a bookmark designed by a local artist, a sticker and a magnet. But you’ll already have received your true treasure — hours spent happily browsing the stacks at one-of-a-kind shops, finding your next great read and supporting the dedicated booksellers who put it in your hands, not your mailbox.
My first tour stop was Everyone’s Books in Brattleboro, whose website says it specializes in “books about social change, the environment, and multicultural children’s books.” According to its logo, the store has been “raising hell since 1984,” and it does feel as though revolution is in the air. You’ll find recent bestsellers if you want one, but at the back of the store you can peruse several thick binders of left-wing bumper stickers for sale. I left with a copy of Vermont high school principal Ken Cadow’s Kirkus Prize-winning YA novel, Gather, and The Last of the Hill Farms: Echoes of Vermont’s Past by Richard W. Brown.
Since we were Vermont close, my husband and I headed up Interstate 91 to Village Square Booksellers in Bellows Falls, where we got happily lost in its well-curated books, toys and gifts, including a homely-cute collection of Ugly Dolls. I spent a few minutes nostalgically flipping through a picture book I remembered from my childhood, Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, illustrated by Susan Jeffers.
On a bluebird day in October, I headed north to St. Albans to check out the Eloquent Page, a browser’s paradise where new and used books are shelved cheek by jowl in a happy mélange, often crosswise on top of traditional vertical stacks, making you feel as though you’re in someone’s personal library. You’ll also find a selection of rare first editions. I crossed two gifts off my list with Middlebury professor, author and poet Jay Parini’s Robert Frost: Sixteen Poems to Learn by Heart and local forester Ethan Tapper’s How to Love a Forest, plus used paperback copies of Moyra Caldecott’s Sacred Stones trilogy — tied together with string, no less — for my husband to try.
With three locations, Phoenix Books is Vermont’s homegrown mini-chain, and the Church Street Marketplace location in Burlington served me the indie-est interaction during my November visit. A bookseller who had her arms full of merchandise but seemed completely unharried asked me if I needed help (nope!) and then just stood there, as though waiting for me to continue a dialogue. Her name tag said “Renee,” and I recognized her from Seven Days coverage as co-owner Renee Reiner. Since she seemed more interested in conversation than in the completion of her to-do list, we chatted about the new location, the quantity of seasonal foot traffic and the new performance space on the second level before my husband wandered over.
“What do you do?” Reiner asked him, as though she had all the time in the world instead of full arms and a packed preholiday store.
“I work in data processing, and I’m a musician,” he replied. Do you sing? Yes. Are you a tenor? Yes. Reiner said the hospice choir she sings with needed tenors, and off they went to trade emails. No online retailer can duplicate that kind of human connection.
My visits to Phoenix’s locations added to my growing stack of books: Matt Haig’s latest novel, The Life Impossible; Seven Days consulting editor Margot Harrison’s first adult novel, The Midnight Club; and Ingvild Rishøi’s Norwegian Christmas tale Brightly Shining.
Booksellers were only too ready to ooh and ahh over my selections at the register.
We hit four passport stores during a day trip down Route 7. At the Bookstore in Brandon, a mom behind me in line watched me get my passport stamped and asked for details, which the enthusiastic bookseller shared. Her two tweens took copies for themselves and started planning where they would get stamps. My brother-in-law will love Sonny Boy, the new Al Pacino autobiography I didn’t know about until I saw it on display there.
The Flying Pig Bookstore in Shelburne, Vermont Book Shop in Middlebury and Phoenix’s Rutland location were all exemplars of the indie vibe: compelling handwritten staff recs, thoughtfully curated displays, and booksellers only too ready to ooh and ahh over my selections at the register. Once my gift list was complete, I just kept buying copies of Gather. (Spoiler alert: If you’re on my Christmas list this year, there’s a very good chance that’s what you’re getting. It’s so good. Trust me.)
At my most recent stop, Bear Pond Books in Montpelier, I was thrilled to note that the floors are once again creaking comfortingly, post flood. Equally encouraging to me was the sound of a young girl reading her chapter book out loud at full volume, curled up in a chair beside house tortoise Veruca’s habitat tank.
I plan to explore all the stores on the passport, and I won’t stop there. Crow Bookshop in Burlington is still one of my favorite indies, where I’ll always return for serendipitous browsing of new and used books. Newish Inklings Children’s Books in Waitsfield isn’t on the passport either, but it is on my list to check out. Antidote Books, also not part of the 2024-25 tour, is just down the street from Everyone’s Books in Brattleboro, so I popped in to browse the tiny but impressive selection of small-press offerings and books by underrepresented poets and writers.
Personally, I recommend you give Gather a read — or ask Reiner for her pick. She’s a human, not an algorithm, and I guarantee her selection will send you on a journey.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Putting Books in Hands | A former big-box bookseller’s read on the local bookstore scene
This article appears in The Reading Issue 2024.
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