Creating an Inclusive Community Through Books with Kate Keisling

When Not Yet Becomes Right Now (00:00)
Welcome to When Not Yet Becomes Right Now, the podcast where we dive deep into the moments of transformation, the times when not yet shifts into right now and everything changes. I'm your host Jen Ginty, and this podcast is all about those pivotal moments in our life journeys. You know the ones when the hesitation fades, when we take that first step, even if it feels like a leap. It's in these moments that growth and healing begins.

Each episode will explore stories of resilience, moments of clarity, and the sparks that ignite real change, from personal experiences to expert insights. We'll uncover how people navigate the complex journey we call life and come out stronger on the other side. Whether you're searching for that spark in your own life or just curious about how change unfolds for others, you're in the right place. We'll discuss the ups and downs, the breakthroughs and setbacks, and how to embrace the right now, even when it feels out of reach.

because sometimes the hardest part of the journey is realizing that the moment you've been waiting for has already arrived. So take a deep breath, settle in, and let's get started.

When Not Yet Becomes Right Now (01:09)
Hello and welcome to When Not Yet Becomes Right Now. Today I have a special guest on with me. This is Kate. Kate Keasling is the founder of the Purple Couch Bookshop, a cozy shop known for its welcoming atmosphere and carefully curated selection of books. Kate is passionate about creating a space where readers of all ages can gather, discover new stories, and connect over a shared love for stories. With a focus on inclusivity,

and fostering a love for reading. Kate has made the Purple Couch the go-to spot for anyone looking to get lost in a good book. Kate and I met when I asked her if I could do Moody Storytime at the shop. We've had so many wonderful chats about life and the love of books. I can't wait to find out more about Kate's journey from corporate to entrepreneur.

When Not Yet Becomes Right Now (01:57)
Hi, Kate. Hello, how are you? Good, good. Thank you so much for coming on. Well, thank you for asking me to do this. I'm excited to talk with you about all this stuff. Yes. I love the idea behind this podcast and what you're trying to get out there for information because I wish I had it when I was younger. Agreed. Agreed.

So yeah, let's get into it. What would you say was your origin story, your love of books? What was the beginning of that love? I guess I would say it was probably our Friday trips to the local library when I was in grade school. Well, that and reading to my dog. But we had books in the house from a very young age. Everybody in my family read. My parents were both avid readers.

When I was little, I grew up in a town of like 1500 people. So we literally would walk out of the little red school house, cross the street, walk down this main street and go to the little tiny library and walk down into the basement and that smell of books. And it just really gets you. I remember the most vivid one is the Secret Garden was the first book I fell in love with and got multiple times from the library. So. I love that book. Yeah.

And a little bit of a weird one, but the Red Balloon, they showed the video and I just remember the book and I read it recently and I was like, wow, this is kind of creepy. But I really loved it when I was little. But yeah, that I think is what kind of helped me fall in love with books for sure. So now you spend time in the corporate world, right? And from what we've talked about, was...

a moment during that time that you just were like, it's time, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I studied hospitality in school, and I was kind of surprised to find myself in the software world after that. The job I ended up being able to find was for a software company that did software for hotels. So I ended up in the sort of 40-hour workweek world that was not the typical service job.

But I loved it because I got to travel on someone else's dime for a long time. But I met so many cool people in lots of different places. And you just learn a lot about people by seeing different places and seeing how other people live from little tiny Lake June-Aleska, North Carolina, which just got slammed by the hurricane. I was thinking of those folks. That was one of the first places I had to visit to all these super big city hotels and everything in between. So that was great.

The part I didn't like was the emphasis on, you the almighty dollar and helping people who have a lot of money, make a whole lot more money. And the folks who do all the work don't really get that much credit for it. You know, so many people who spent hours and hours testing and retesting and quality assurance on the, you know, the stuff I was helping build and those folks were not getting any credit for the catching all those major things that would have really screwed up our customers and

That kind of thing just always didn't sit right with me. yeah, later in my career, I definitely hit that wall. So I did take a break when my younger son was about 18 months old. We refinanced the house and my husband and I were like, okay, let's draw straws who gets to stay home for a while. And I won. But after about 18 months, he was getting a little older and I was ready to be back among the adults.

And I worked at a different company that meant I was working from home full time. So from about 2011 until about two years ago, I was working home full time even before the pandemic. but it was a similar environment, just always under the gun, always working ridiculous hours and always just putting in, know, sitting in living room on the couch while the kids are playing on my laptop, getting work done. And it just was soul sucking.

So I was really done. Yeah, I did a similar job when I first got out of college. I was doing web design and development. And we were doing the first online place that you could buy computers from. And it was originally called Netbuyer.

And yeah, and then we became computer shopper because we were owned by the same publishing company that was that humongous book. And, you know, the amount of hours that I put in, I didn't have children at that time, but it was, it could be very thankless. Very. Yeah. And we had beepers back then. And in the middle of the night, I get a beeper. I had more than my own, more than my share of on-call shifts too. Yep.

And then I thought I was so cool when I got my Blackberry, right? And then I was like, I don't want anything to do with this. Just give it back. you know, just because you can access me doesn't mean I want to be accessed. you know, sitting at the dinner table or wherever else with the kids. Yeah. Not cool. Yeah. Yeah. So what was that final push for you to say, okay, it is time to live a dream? Yeah, I think,

Well, there were two, probably one to get out of the tech world and then another to finally be like, could do this. The tech world side of things was obviously everybody went through their own COVID mess story, right? We all went through a lot through that period of time. And in the work side of my world, I still working from home, I was working with a team who was primarily in the UK and

It was, there were some contentious conversations sometimes, and I was trying to work with my boss to figure out how to handle some situations, and he was less than responsive and got upset with me for talking to HR, and I just was, I was done. I was like, you know what, this is, I don't need to do this anymore. And it was physically impacting my health in a big way. I had a lot of health issues that

once I left that environment, they started to get better. How odd. Suddenly. my goodness. So, but yeah, it definitely took a toll and I actually, I was questioning whether I should leave the job, but I knew I needed to take some kind of break because I was in a lot of pain and I was just dealing with a lot of physical issues. And I took the break. went on disability for a little while.

And I still was, you know, it took a few months of, you know, different kinds of therapies, trying different things to just not be in pain anymore. And then I, you know, got to the point where that wasn't really solving it because I still had this, you know, sitting over my head of I have to go back, right? Like I have to go back to this job. And then they elliminated the position while I was out. And I, first I was like, is that even legal?

Are you allowed to do that? Right. But and then I thought, you know what, maybe this is the kick in the pants I need, you know, just to do something different. And and I was kind of glad that that happened. And then as I'm thinking of like, what's the next thing, my hometown bookstore came up for sale. And it actually was a small chain of stores. And when I started investigating, I was like, yeah, I can't pull that up.

But they did peel one of the stores off and I thought I might be able to do that. That didn't happen to turn out, but I did speak to some of the DeMoulas folks during that process. And then I went back to them and said, this isn't gonna work. And they said, you know, we do actually have some space in North Andover that might work. And I was like, where? Because they never put for lease signs up or that sort of thing. And I didn't even know this was empty. So I was pretty excited when I...

found that and I started kind of getting the wheels moving to investigate and I spent like a year trying to figure out how to run a bookstore. There's thankfully lots of training to do. The American Booksellers Association has amazing resources and there's lots of stuff out there. There's a group called Has Training that's a couple who owns a store down in Florida and they are just expert booksellers and they share their knowledge with everybody, I mean for a small fee but it's

more than worth it. So I just, I'm one of those people who I need to feel like completely sure it's going to work before I dip my toe in. So I did a ton of research and I still felt like I was going to fall in my face. I still do every day feel like I'm not falling my face, but just building that confidence to think it could possibly work. Yeah. And so it's been a year since you opened. Yeah. So

How was that opening? How was that stress level? I can imagine there must have been a high amount of As someone who has been in retail before, owned a shop, there's that level that we can tolerate, right? Yeah. It was very nerve wracking. So there were milestones leading up to it that made me go, my god, this is real.

the day you sign the loan. Like you and I talked about that with your, you know, getting the funding to do some more moody's, right? It's that all of a sudden you're like, okay, this is gonna happen. The ball is rolling. I'm underneath the rock that's going up the hill, right? And then the next one was those giant bills of, I just bought my fixtures. my God, that was like $30,000. I can't believe I just spent that. And then the next one was my initial inventory.

order and I just choked when I sent that one through. But the I think the best one was when all all the books in that initial order, they started arriving in these little boxes and we're like, cool, this can be so much fun. And then the truck pulled up out front with 10 pallets of books, a couple of which were like this, the pallets broke under the under the weight of the books.

The guy's like, do you think you could help me? just make sure this doesn't, I'm like, you really think I'm going to be able to stop 30 boxes of books from falling over and killing me, man? But I did, cause, cause I'm just that dumb sometimes, but I just was like, how are we going to do this? You know, but I, I was blown away by how many people just wanted to come and help, you know, they just wanted to come and see what it was like and, help.

put the books on the shelves and say, yeah, I was part of this, which was like, whoa. It was very heartening. Yeah, you know, it's interesting with all the interviews I've been doing, there is always this sense of community that becomes so important in our journeys and the excitement and being able to share the excitement with others. And it's surprising. You know, we all have that.

classic imposter syndrome, right? And it was, I guess, like you never, you have some confidence in yourself, but you don't realize how other people see you until you do something that visible. So it was fun. Yeah. Yeah.

that feeling of accomplishment when the doors open? How was that for you? Did you feel that? That was weird. Definitely weird. I'm getting a tissue because I'm a big crybaby. But that day, North Andover Merchants Association had done stuff I didn't even know they were doing. They went and got these proclamations from the

The Senate in Massachusetts and the House in Massachusetts, they both had these little certificates made up, signed by the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader, like all that stuff. And I was like, you gotta be kidding me. you know, the House were up and like Bruce Tarr was here and

Yeah, they were all here. It was fantastic. A lot of the select board folks from town came and we did a whole ribbon cutting ceremony and everything. It was cool. that's so wonderful. You know, again, I used to be in the center of attention, though. was like, know what you mean. And that imposter syndrome, you know, it can really creep in at times, especially those times, right? Where everybody's coming up around you and you're like, they're here for me.

Right? And they're proud of me. You should just like sitting in a corner and observing someone else doing that stuff, right? And just thinking, that's kind of cool. I wish I could do that, you know, but never really never give myself the credit to think I could do it. But it's been a lot of learning a lot of times where I'm kicking myself for not knowing. And I have to remind myself like

you've never done this before, you have no idea how to run a business, like, of course you're make mistakes. Maybe you did that, but look at all these other things, you know, just, it's hard to remember to do that in the moment, but trying to keep doing that, so. Yeah, giving ourselves grace. I think it's really hard for women especially to give ourselves that little bit of, it's okay, this happened. And like you said, these are all the other things that went so right right now.

Yep. Yeah. So your bookshop, I have to say, is just so warm and inviting. And you it's you can feel the inclusivity in the shop. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Yeah, I am. I'm glad to hear you say that. That's the goal. Right. And well, just my

My initial vision was I wanted it to be a place where people wanted to come and hang out and like have it be a place where we could build some community, which we've been fortunate that we've been able to pull that off in a few areas and just finding the right thing to bring people together. But it was also fun to kind of decorate it, like just having the right space for it too. You know, people, it's.

fun to watch people come in and be like, wow, this is not what I was expecting when they walk into a bookstore in a strip mall, you know? But my, the initial piece of furniture, that purple couch was a labor of love. My find on buy nothing North Andover, this purple van bench, looks like floor cover or whatever. And I was like, I gotta be able to do something with that.

And my brother-in-law, Kenny, he restores furniture. he helped, you know, I said, take a look at this, see what you think you could do with it. And could you put a back on it? Could you put some sides or whatever? And he managed to make it look amazing. And he built the whole frame around it with the arms and everything. It looks just like the logo. And that's where it really came from. And so we had all that designed. It was just...

It was sitting on my sister's kitchen table for a while while he worked on it. She's like, I swear it's going to get done. Took a while. Because he's, you know, he has some back problems. So it took him longer than the average carpenter might have taken. But he did such an amazing job on it. And we went to look for fabric to put on the arms that he built. And nothing really looked right with that purple velour. What do you want to call it?

So we kind of went in a different direction and put some like gold paisley stuff on it, but it made it kind of funky. And it gets a lot of, a lot of comments. And I just had so much fun filling the rest of the space with all these Facebook marketplace and Canal Street antiques market, which if you've never been, that place is amazing. it is. It's great. it's phenomenal. So much fun to pick around in there. And it's so different every time you go. But got a lot of things from there and,

literally like one of the chairs is literally a side of the road pick. Just and just recently someone was moving and she sent an email and said, Hey, I have this purple couch and chair. I can't take it with me. I really feel like you guys should have it. Would you want it? I was like, yeah, of course I would. So just like all these little nooks that we were able to create where people can sit and relax and and I, I

In doing this, like I was talking about community, it's people have come out of the woodwork to help. Like one of those women who works at the Eagle Tribune, Maura, came to us with the idea for Silent Book Club, which has been a huge hit. And again, the comfy furniture came in very handy. Like come and sit on a comfortable couch and just read for an hour like you did when you were in school. And it was the cool quiet time that you could read your own thing and everybody loved it. And people have been intrigued by that. And then I have another.

Another guy, I started carrying Warhammer and he came in and was like, I want to do this. I want to help you create this group and we'll do build and paint nights and we'll do game nights. And we did a, a tournament this weekend and we've got another one coming up in December. And he just has been a huge help in getting that off the ground and just, you know, piece by piece. People are, people are coming to us to help build these little mini communities and our, romance book club is.

just off the charts, phenomenal folks. And it's getting too big actually. We've got a different way to organize it, but just an amazing group of people and so welcoming to every new person who's come in. And it's just, it's really fun to see come together. Yeah. So give us a little inside look at bookshops, if you will. Yeah. How do you...

create these, the book of the month, how do you pick your books? Yeah. I stumbled into these things. I stumbled into having a great staff with a really wide array of genres that they like. Of course, my manager, Shelley, is a huge romance fan and she's slowly pulling them all into romance.

But there's, you know, there's a couple who read more YA, there's a couple who read more fantasy, there's a couple who read more, you know, BIPOC authors and social justice stuff. I like history and historical fiction and biographies and memoirs. So we each have our fingers in different genres, which has really helped us to keep that staff pick shelf, have some variety on that staff pick shelf, which has been great.

And then the IndieNext, some of your listeners might have heard of IndieNext, which is the independent booksellers all come together and the publishers send us advanced reader copies of tons of books. And every month we vote on what that next month's book choice is going to be. So when you see an IndieNext pick, that means hundreds of bookstores from across the country voted and said, this is the book. Like, y'all are going to love this book.

And they do it for both kids and for adults and then they'll put out reading group pamphlets. So we always have that stuff in the store as well. It's not just one selection. There's a whole group of selections that have all been highly recommended by loads of booksellers. Plus our own stock picks. So sometimes we'll pick the new releases and sometimes we'll yank like, you know, the...

the catcher in the rye and stuff, older stuff like that, that has recommendations. And as you go through the store, even if it's not up on the staff pick shelf, you'll see the little tags throughout the store of things that our team recommends. That's great. Yeah. I try to incent them. We have a little Google form and I say, right, whoever fills out the most reviews at end of the month, you can get a gift card to use in the store. my team gets a pretty hefty discount because I want them to read the books, right? So.

Right now it's really been Shelly and Olivia alternating, my manager and assistant manager, because I need to get my younger staff reading, but they're all applying to colleges and trying to keep up. But that's the way we try to push our team to read, but it's hard to keep up with all the books, just everything coming out at once. I can imagine. You have so much to pick from.

Yeah. Must be fun. It is fun. It is. It's fun. And it's also somewhat overwhelming sometimes. But it's fascinating to read through the wide array of things that people write about. You would never think would be the topic of a book, that just turn out to be really great books. And so the publishers

send us what they call catalogs on this. There's a internet platform, they send them to us and they make their own comments on things. And I mean, we obviously can't read every single book that comes in the store. So they help us that way. And they also, we can see what other stores have it on hand or have it on order. And we can recommend books in there for the other booksellers to see the review. So you may get to know.

a few folks in your area or booksellers from across the country that you're like, that person reviewed it. I know it's going to be good. So that helps us select along the way too. Very cool. Yeah. So looking down the road, what would you like to see the purple couch bookshop be in the community? I would love to see it.

I'd love to see it become a place that people gather for different reasons. Like I kept talking about wanting to do not just book events, but community-based events. we're doing a benefit. My son happens to be in the choir for North Andover, but we're doing a benefit to send kids who might not otherwise be able to go on this big trip to Florida that they're doing in the spring.

So some of the proceeds from that night and for our internet sales for that week will go toward them being able to offer scholarships to kids who were going on that trip. that kind of thing, I'd love to do more of that and or maybe have community discussions like how have somebody who is very knowledgeable about a topic come in and do a talk. Like we had Christine Coney from Nature's Pace.

come in and do a talk about how to get your kids out into nature. So she's not an author, but we could recommend a lot of books around that topic. And she gave us some selections. We had some others on hand already. So she can share that knowledge about forest bathing and just finding your place just out in nature and connecting off the grid a little bit, or we call them analog adventures. Just a way to learn a little bit more about a thing you might not.

have as easy a time figuring out yourself or maybe it's what are the ways that you can care for your aging parents? What are some of the resources you didn't even know you had trying to I'm looking for a community member who might be able to come in and talk to that that just things that would be beneficial not just I yeah I want to sell books obviously I want to be wildly successful and be able to retire at 55. Depthful. Especially considering I'm But we can all dream right.

But trying to create that space where people can come in and learn and have it impact their life immediately. Yeah. I feel like there is this pushback now that I think once COVID happened and everybody was relying on big box places, I feel like that's starting to change. Do you feel a turn in that with your shop? Yeah.

On the positive side, have so many kids come in. The development of series for kids books, I think has been hugely beneficial because with the, you know, entertainment in the form of TV and movies, TV shows, all being sort of binge worthy, like you binge all the Marvel movies or you binge a whole series of a TV show and kids want that next book in the series. So they're doing the same thing with books and it's keeping them engaged in reading.

which it's hugely beneficial. I get so excited when kids come in and they're 12, 13 years old and they're really excited about buying books or asking for recommendations. They just finished this series, what should I read next? A teenager's, don't get me started. I get so excited when teenagers come in and they're all excited about reading. We practically fight it by each other to get to help somebody like that. But I think...

The big difference is people are sick of being on their screens all day and they want that physical book in their hands. They want to look at something other than something that's backlit and hurting their eyes or whatever. And just to unplug a little bit. We do still get lots of folks who come in and they want to take pictures of the covers of the books because they're going to go buy it on Amazon. Or we get folks who are like, will you price match Amazon? Well, the money you spend here is going back into the community and the money you spend on Amazon is going to send

some idiot millionaire into space. Just think about where the money's going. It's ease. Yeah, you can get it quickly. You can get it overnight. But is it that important that you get it immediately? If we don't happen to have it on hand, we can still get it to you for free shipping. then you can feel good that the money you spend is going to go toward a choral kid going to something or some other.

a way that we can feed back into the community as much as we can. Yeah. Yeah. I had a similar experience with the boutique that I had where people would come in and I'd fit them in jeans and then they'd take pictures of the jeans and buy them online. And that's when I just knew the tide is changing. But for books, it's the experience, the touching, the feeling, the excitement of going into a shop and finding that book.

that changes your reading life. Yeah, it's so fun. two things that you were just saying, like we get people who come in, they walk into the shop and they're like, you can smell the books, know, like and that kind of reaction. But also having a conversation with a reader when they come into the shop about a book and then having someone else from the other end of the store come over and say, my God, I just read that book.

did you read blah, blah? And they just start talking with each other about books and you just kind of step back and go, okay. That's what it's all about. That's why we do it. It's just fun to watch. It's that community again. The word comes up again and watching people talk with each other because I feel like for the past few years, especially during COVID, is that we were so disconnected from other human beings.

Absolutely. And I'm sure it must feel so wonderful to watch those conversations. It is. it's very often the people who are a little bit more introverted that will come in and find that connection because, know, I'm what you might call an extroverted introvert. Like I need my downtime, but I can still have the public conversations. But there's a lot of folks who just they come to life.

when they're talking one-on-one with someone who shares their interests. And it's really, you you can kind of get the sense when you greet someone kind of exuberantly and they're like, yeah, hi, you know. But then you catch that conversation between two folks who are looking in the same section and they're talking about, you know, someone's talking about a book and, I just read, you know, and you hear those starting organically without any of us even being there. And it's just, that's the stuff, you know.

Yeah, people who come in and they just, they, they sit and look at the stuff before they buy it. They just kind of poke through it. And we get some folks who come in almost every day and they may not buy every anything every day, but they're some of our best customers and they sit and they just, they look at stuff and they read, they might bring their own book in and just want to sit on the couch and read in a quiet place. They've got their own little silent book club going.

And it's that stuff too, even if they don't talk with anybody, they have a place where they feel like they can go. It's that extra place that it becomes important. a name for it, the third place. And I'm losing it. it's like besides home and work and church or spirituality, or maybe it's the fourth place, but having that other place of community that becomes important.

It really does. And you're a local bookshop and the listeners are not all going to be in our area. What would you say to someone who is, want books, like you said, with Amazon, they want them right away. But what can they do to become a part of their own community through a bookshop? There are so many bookshops.

than you even know are there. I can't tell you how many people. We did, independent bookstore day, we did the North of Boston bookstore trail with 16 of us stores got together. had a company called Wildly Enough that helped us pull it all together. They helped us design a little passport and everything and leading up to it and on the day, we would hand people the little bookmark that had all the stores or the passport and they go, I didn't even know how these places exist.

Google, you know, another ubiquitous term, like search up what are local bookstores in my area. And chances are there are way more than you realize. And they're just such awesome places. There's some very specific ones that might be, you know, your romance bookshop, your, you know, BIPOC or queer bookshop. You might have something that's all mysteries. You might have something that's all fantasy, or you just might have a general interest bookstore that has some really great events that they're all worth checking out.

They all have something unique and they're awesome, awesome, awesome people. They've just been, it's from the tech industry. I think I've said to you before in our side conversations, it's like a warm hug coming into this industry because everybody is so welcoming. They want to share their ideas with you. Say, Hey, this worked for me. Why don't you try it? and they're not like, it's not, you know, it's intellectual property and you can't talk about it.

It's not like that at all. Everybody's really welcoming and it's worth it to spend your money in a place like that and feel like you are contributing to something. Yeah. And if somebody was like, I want to open a bookshop, what advice would you give them? I would say take the classes. It's so worth it because you need to know what you're getting into before you start.

Because if I had started without doing those, I would be completely lost. But there are so many people who want to help you. So the local associations, the American booksellers, the New England booksellers do the training, but just talk to a local bookstore owner and they're going to say, here are the things that you should do. Like any one of us wants you to succeed because we all want this industry to grow. We want to, you know.

put the big boxes to shame when it comes to creating communities and finding those unique books that aren't part of the algorithm that's getting presented to you every day and is shrinking the diversity of opinions more and more and more. That's where it happens. So any one of those booksellers is gonna help you. And they're all gonna have their own little quirks and nuances and pieces of advice. And they'll all give you their card and say, call me anytime and we will all mean it.

because it truly is a very welcoming industry. That's wonderful. So where can we find you? So we are in North Annover, Massachusetts in the Market Basket Plaza on Route 114. And I personally am here about five days a week. But you can also find us online at bookshop.org. And you can search for your local bookshop there or you can

search us, I would not be upset about that. But bookshop.org is a great organization. They are a B Corp. They share profits with all of the contributing bookstores. So we each get our own affiliate page, but then they also just share profits twice a year with all of us. So it's really built just for indie bookstores. So every dollar you spend there goes to your local bookstore, even if you don't choose any bookstore. So it's a wonderful place.

But yeah, that's where you'd find us. North Andover MA right by 495 and 114. And online, bookshelf.org. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, Kate. So much wealth of knowledge. Well, thank you so much, because you have been giving me your time and energy. And Saturday Storytimes, once again, someone who

wants to build the community and comes to me and says, hey, can I do this with you? And it's just been awesome. I've loved watching the kids react and hearing them get excited about seeing Moody. And it's just been wonderful. So thank you so much for being part of the success of the store so long. Thank you. It's a pleasure to come in every week and to, again, smell those books and talk with you guys. And again.

reach community. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Jen, for having me. Thank you.

When Not Yet Becomes Right Now (36:45)
Kate just has such a wonderful story. I truly appreciate all that she does in her own independent bookshop. And she's right, there are so many bookstores out there in our community landscape that we haven't even known of. And I ask you to think about maybe unplugging a little bit and spending some time at one of those bookshops.

because they really are there for community and it's important that we're a part of it. Thank you.