'It's sad for me.' Archives Book Shop to close in East Lansing
EAST LANSING — It's the last chapter for the Archives Book Shop, a used bookstore that's been around since the 1980s.
Ray Walsh, who owns Archives and its sister store, Curious Book Shop, said it was time.
"Our customer base is shrinking, they're passing away, and we're getting significantly fewer people coming in," said Walsh, who reviews books for the Lansing State Journal as a contributing columnist.
The store on Grand River Avenue will close at the end of this month. Books are now on sale for half off and Walsh has at least 20,000 volumes, and around 100,000 items all told, to sell, donate or move somewhere else.
Some of the books are already in boxes in the aisles of the Curious Book Shop, also on Grand River Avenue, right across from the heart of Michigan State University's main campus. Walsh plans to keep his Curious Book Shop open.
The Archives opened in 1987, about 20 years after Walsh first started selling books out of a garage while he was a student at MSU. He soon established the Curious Book Shop and moved it to its current storefront in 1973.
As a sister store, Archives took on its own personality, establishing itself as the more cultured and less pop-culture-oriented of the two shops, Walsh said.
Archives Book Shop has been, and will be for another few weeks, a home for rare books, signed copies or early editions or texts with fine bindings, in addition to post cards and many other bits of literary ephemera. Archives also has large collections of Michigan history, children's books, craft books, military history, cookbooks, art books and mysteries. (Agatha Christie's books have all been snapped up).
Curious Book Shop has kept more Manga, comics and entertainment-focused offerings, and both stores have historically avoided textbooks or schoolbooks, aside from an occasional book that can pull double duty.
Just a few years ago, Walsh's business was still coming largely from people walking around, browsing the sections or asking about a specific book. The pandemic hurt his business and now there are days when Walsh sells more over Amazon, eBay and Etsy sites than he does in the shops, he said.
The Archives took over a location that had been a textiles shop called The Yarn Studio, a name Walsh kept for a while.
From the start, those visiting the sister store might find what they were looking for or get redirected to the Curious Book Shop.
This back and forth, alphabetizing books on his shelves and strategizing about how people might find him in the phone book prompted Walsh to come up with the Archives name.
"We only changed it because Yarn, that was low in the alphabet so we wanted something with an 'A,'" Walsh said.
He started the Curious Book Shop more than a half century ago after buying about 1,000 paperbacks from a professor while he was an MSU student. At one time, he also operated Curious Books Too in Ann Arbor and Argos, a bookstore, in Grand Rapids, but sold those to focus on East Lansing and open up the Archives.
In 2007, Walsh received the Crystal Award, which honors individuals, businesses, and organizations which have made an outstanding contribution East Lansing. He served for three years on the Michigan Notable Book Award committee.
"It's sad for me," Walsh said, "I've spent my life here and I really appreciate our community."
Contact Mike Ellis at mellis@lsj.com or 517-267-0415
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Ray Walsh's Archives Book Shop in East Lansing closing
