Bookshops biz story

Sep. 24—Three area booksellers with different business models say their stores' futures appear promising as one seeks new leadership, another reports increased sales and a third has reopened.

Toadstool Bookshop, which has locations in Peterborough, Keene and Nashua, is looking for its next owner after founder Willard Williams became interested in stepping down from his 50 years in operation.

"About a year ago we began to make plans to find new owners for the store," Williams said. "That hasn't happened yet, but we have somebody fairly interested."

Williams, 70, of Peterborough, said he feels the store needs "some new energy and new direction" and that he's optimistic he'll find a local owner to bring in the spirit he's looking for. He said the business has talked with about 20 people in the last year and that the current interested buyer is someone in the region.

"The intent is certainly to keep the stores operating as they have been," Williams said. "In the past, we've heard lots of comments from folks about how much they really liked the store and wanted it to continue the way it is."

The lifelong bookseller said he and his family opened their first location, the Peterborough store, in 1972 before expanding to Keene in 1983 and later Milford in 1989. The Milford location more recently closed after about 30 years, Williams said, and the shop in Nashua took its place.

The store's origins stem from Williams growing up in a "house full of books," he said, and an office store in Peterborough that sold a small collection of books.

"There wasn't any particular competition as far as bookstores go in Peterborough [then]," he said. "There were the mall stores but ... they were [far away]. When we moved to Keene there were a couple of bookstores there as well, none of which are there now."

Over time, Toadstool grew and Williams' older siblings became investors in the initial location. Now, decades after the first book was sold, Williams said he estimates each of the three stores has an inventory of about 50,000-60,000 books.

The store has always stuck with its direct sales roots, even as franchise bookstores expanded and online purchases have become commonplace. And not even COVID could deter the business.

Williams said he's observed an overall increase in customers compared to pre-pandemic times after the store reopened for a full year at the end of 2021.

"I think it's very much the case that people want to go out," he said, adding that the number of visitors this year has still been more than 2019. "We've also been able to have some live in-store events which we weren't doing at all during the time of COVID."

Williams said Toadstool saw significantly more book sales through its website as it sought different ways of getting stories in customers' hands.

"We had a very shrunken staff and we filled those website orders but also delivered curbside to people who came up to the door," he said. "The thing with books is that there's new titles out all the time, and so we continued to bring in new books and new titles."

But for AardBooks, a bookselling business in Fitzwilliam that focuses on used and out-of-print offerings, sales have been better than ever despite the fact that owner Gus McLeavy never sees any customers. That's because he and his wife, Laura Kelsey, sell solely online.

"The whole COVID thing helped our business about a year-and-a-half simply because more people were home, had more time to read or fall into something else they had remembered before," McLeavy said. "In the last year-and-a-half, we've fallen back to normal."

McLeavy said he and Kelsey have sold books for 35 years, starting in 1993 when they moved to New England from Seattle. Their business began when McLeavy, a teacher and freelance writer, was awaiting payment on an article to cover three months of his rent.

"I passed by a yard sale that had some pretty good looking books for a quarter," he said. "I put together a box of books, walked them up to the next block where there was a used bookstore, sold the box for $20 that I just paid $4 for and it was instant gratification."

From there the idea took off, with McLeavy inspired by long-time booksellers he said he spent time with back in Seattle.

For much of their 35 years, McLeavy and Kelsey lived in a home in Troy where they welcomed some in-person shopping for the first five years of operations. Then, about six years ago, they both made the move to their current residence in Fitzwilliam and are now mail-order only.

Most of AardBooks' collection comes from New England Book Auctions of South Deerfield, Mass., McLeavy said, adding that he maintains a total of fewer than 10,000 books since the business is fully run from his house. He said it becomes complicated for him to take books when other online sales of particular books have driven prices down.

"People ask us if they can sell us their books, [but] most of the time they don't have what can be sold online for profit," McLeavy said. "Most of the time they have books that sell online for $2 or $3."

On average, McLeavy estimates he sells 2,500-3,000 books a year and said he's outlasted similar home booksellers in the region that existed in Jaffrey and Walpole because of careful curation and steady sales.

Meanwhile in Peterborough, Kyes-Sage Bookshop, adjacent to the town library, is back in business after temporarily closing its doors in 2019 in advance of the library closing for renovations. The shop reopened over Memorial Day weekend earlier this year, according to Library Director Corinne Chronopoulos.

She said those renovations — which included moving a heating, ventilation and air conditioning system to the back of the Kyes-Sage House — also involved the bookshop as it's located within the historic property. The shop held several book sales in advance of closing, Chronopoulos said, and Epilepsy Foundation New England gathered the remaining stock.

"As part of the library project we really embraced the building further," Chronopoulos said. "In the back of the building we put our state-of-the-art woodchip burner and absorption chiller; so our HVAC plant is in the back of the house and then the front of the house is a bookshop."

Kyes-Sage Bookshop is managed by a nonprofit, Friends of the Library, which Chronopoulos said gives all proceeds from sales back to the Peterborough Town Library to support its operating budget and programming. She said the shop was founded in 1999 as a way to preserve the house.

Since its reopening, the shop has kept reliable business, with Chronopoulos estimating it receives about $2,000 per month in sales. She's grateful to see it back, as she said its book collection is made up of donations from the community which spares the library from having to take them in.

"Having a nice place to repurpose them is great," she said. "The other nice thing about the store is that it's run by volunteers ... that get to work and do something meaningful together."

The shop will close for the winter in mid-November, continuing an annual seasonal schedule it followed its other 20 years in business, but even in spite of being what Chronopoulos said is a "hidden gem," it'll be back to reliably opening next year to serve local readers.

Trisha Nail can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1436, or tnail@keenesentinel.com. Follow her on Twitter at @byTrishaNail.