I walked into a bookstore in Portland last spring, one of those places where the shelves lean slightly under the weight of their inventory and the floorboards creak in a way that feels deliberate, like the building is trying to tell you something. The owner, a woman named Ruth who looked to be in her mid-sixties, was shelving a stack of poetry collections by hand. She didn’t look up when I came in, which I appreciated. There’s something deeply comforting about a shopkeeper who trusts you to find your own way.

That store, like hundreds of others scattered across the country, shouldn’t exist. At least, that’s what the prevailing wisdom told us twenty years ago. When Amazon began selling books at steep discounts in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the obituaries for independent bookstores were already being written. The American Booksellers Association reported that membership dropped from around 4,000 stores in the early 1990s to roughly 1,400 by 2009. The numbers were grim. The trend line was a cliff.

And yet here I was, standing in a thriving independent bookstore in 2023, watching a customer buy three hardcovers at full price without flinching. Something happened between the supposed death of the indie bookstore and this moment. That story, the one about survival and reinvention, is more interesting than the doom narrative ever was.

The Near-Death Experience

To understand how independent bookstores survived, you need to understand how close they came to not surviving. The early Amazon era wasn’t just about price competition, though that was bad enough. It was about convenience. Suddenly you could order any book from your couch at 11 PM and have it arrive in two days. For a certain type of reader, the kind who knew exactly what they wanted and just needed the transaction completed, this was irresistible.

Borders went bankrupt in 2011, which rattled even the biggest optimists. If a chain with 600 stores couldn’t survive, what hope did a single-location shop have? Barnes & Noble spent years looking like it might follow the same path, closing locations and struggling with its identity. The message seemed clear: physical bookstores were a relic.

But here’s what the doomsayers missed. Borders didn’t fail because people stopped wanting bookstores. Borders failed because it was a mediocre bookstore that also happened to be a terrible technology company. It had outsourced its online sales to Amazon in 2001, essentially handing its digital future to its biggest competitor. The chain’s stores were generic, interchangeable, designed more for efficiency than experience. When the financial pressure came, there was nothing holding customers to Borders specifically. No loyalty. No reason to make the trip.

Independent bookstores, the ones that survived, had something different. They had identity.

The Curation Advantage

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, particularly as we publish our own titles here at ScrollWorks Media. When I visit an independent bookstore, I’m not looking for a specific ISBN. I’m looking for a surprise. I want someone who reads 200 books a year to tell me which five I absolutely need to read next. Amazon’s algorithm can try to do this, but it’s working from purchase data and browsing history. A good bookseller is working from taste, intuition, and the look on your face when you describe what you’re in the mood for.

This is what I’d call the curation advantage, and it turned out to be the single most important differentiator for indie stores. When everything is available everywhere (and it is; Amazon has essentially infinite selection), the ability to narrow that selection down becomes the valuable skill. Think about it this way: Netflix has thousands of movies, but most people I know still ask friends for recommendations. Having too many choices isn’t a feature. It’s a problem. Independent booksellers solve that problem every single day.

Powell’s in Portland does this at scale, with staff picks covering every section and handwritten shelf-talkers that sometimes read like miniature essays. But the same principle works at a 500-square-foot shop in a small town. The owner knows the community. She knows that Mrs. Henderson wants historical fiction but nothing too violent, and that the teenager who comes in after school every Thursday is working through all the Ursula K. Le Guin he can find. That knowledge is worth more than any recommendation algorithm.

The Community Pivot

Sometime around 2012 or 2013, I started noticing a shift in how independent bookstores talked about themselves. They stopped competing on selection and price (a battle they could never win) and started competing on experience and community. This wasn’t just marketing. It was a fundamental reimagining of what a bookstore is for.

Author events became more ambitious. Book clubs multiplied. Some stores started hosting children’s story hours, writing workshops, poetry slams, and even live music. The bookstore stopped being purely a retail transaction and became a gathering place, a social hub that happened to sell books. This was smart, because Amazon can ship you a book but it cannot host your neighborhood’s monthly fiction discussion group.

I remember attending a launch event at a small store in Austin around 2015. The place was packed, maybe 80 people in a room designed for 40. The author read from her novel, answered questions, signed books, and then everyone stuck around for wine and conversation. I bought three books that night, none of which I’d come in planning to buy. That experience, the discovery, the social component, the feeling of being part of something, cannot be replicated by clicking “Add to Cart.”

The numbers back this up. The ABA’s membership began climbing again around 2010 and has grown steadily since. By 2022, there were over 2,000 member stores, a significant recovery from the 2009 low. New stores were opening, often started by younger entrepreneurs who saw the bookstore less as a traditional retail play and more as a community-centered business with books at the heart of it.

The Buy-Local Movement Helped More Than Anyone Expected

It would be dishonest to talk about indie bookstore survival without acknowledging the broader buy-local movement that gained momentum in the 2010s. Consumers, particularly younger ones, started caring about where their money went. The idea that spending $25 at a local store keeps more of that money circulating in the local economy than spending $25 on Amazon resonated with people. Organizations like the Institute for Local Self-Reliance published research showing that for every $100 spent at a local business, roughly $68 stayed in the community, compared to about $43 for a chain and even less for an online retailer.

Bookstores became symbols of this movement. They were visible, beloved, and vulnerable, which made them perfect rallying points. “Save your local bookstore” became a bumper sticker, a social media cause, and eventually a genuine consumer behavior shift. I know people who make a point of buying every book at their local indie even when it’s a few dollars more. They see it as an investment in their neighborhood, not an expense.

The IndieBound and Bookshop.org platforms amplified this effect by giving people a way to buy books online while still supporting independent stores. Bookshop.org, which launched in early 2020, was particularly well-timed. When the pandemic forced physical closures, it gave readers a guilt-free alternative to Amazon and directed a meaningful percentage of sales back to indie stores. By the end of 2020, the platform had generated over $30 million for independent bookstores. That’s not pocket change.

What Didn’t Work

Not every strategy worked, and I think it’s worth being honest about that. Some bookstores tried to compete with Amazon on price, which was essentially financial suicide. You cannot discount a product when you’re buying it in quantities of 10 or 20 and your competitor is buying it in quantities of 10,000. The math doesn’t work. Stores that tried to be everything to everyone, stocking massive inventories across every genre, often struggled because the overhead was crushing and the curation suffered.

The e-reader threat, which loomed large in 2010-2013, turned out to be less catastrophic than feared. E-book sales peaked around 2014 and then leveled off. It turned out that most readers didn’t want to go entirely digital. They wanted both. A Kindle for travel and a physical book for their nightstand. This was good news for bookstores, but the stores that had panicked and tried to become tech retailers (selling e-readers, tablets, and accessories) mostly wasted their energy.

Some stores also made the mistake of leaning too heavily into sideline merchandise, things like candles, tote bags, and journals. These products can be a nice supplement, but I’ve been in stores where the books feel like an afterthought, where the front tables are covered with literary-themed socks and pun mugs. That’s a gift shop, not a bookstore. The ones that survived long-term kept books at the center and treated everything else as secondary.

The Pandemic Plot Twist

COVID-19 should have been the killing blow. Stores closed their doors. Foot traffic vanished. Events were impossible. And yet, something remarkable happened: people read more. Stuck at home, anxious and bored, millions of Americans picked up books in quantities not seen in years. Print book sales in 2020 actually increased, rising 8.2% over 2019 according to NPD BookScan.

Independent bookstores adapted with startling speed. They set up online ordering systems overnight, sometimes literally. They offered curbside pickup, curated subscription boxes, and virtual author events that drew audiences from across the country rather than just the neighborhood. Some stores found that their virtual events actually attracted more attendees than in-person ones had, because geography was no longer a limiting factor.

The pandemic also deepened the emotional connection between communities and their bookstores. When people saw their local shop in danger, they rallied. GoFundMe campaigns for bookstores raised significant amounts. Customers pre-ordered books they didn’t need yet just to keep the cash flowing. Gift card sales spiked. It was a collective act of commitment, a community saying “we are not going to let this place disappear.”

I find this genuinely moving, and I think it reveals something important about why bookstores matter beyond their commercial function. They’re landmarks. They’re part of the identity of a neighborhood. Losing your local bookstore feels different from losing a chain restaurant or a cell phone store. It feels personal.

The BookTok Effect

Starting around 2020 and accelerating through 2021 and 2022, TikTok’s book community (known as BookTok) became a genuine force in bookselling. Young readers were filming themselves in bookstores, showing off their hauls, recommending titles, and turning certain books into viral sensations. Colleen Hoover’s backlist, for example, exploded on BookTok and drove enormous physical book sales.

What’s interesting for independent bookstores is that BookTok’s aesthetic favors the physical object. These videos are about the book as a tangible thing, the cover, the pages, the satisfaction of holding it. A Kindle download doesn’t generate the same content. This brought a wave of younger customers into physical bookstores who might otherwise have defaulted to online purchasing. Some indie stores leaned into this brilliantly, creating photogenic displays and BookTok recommendation sections that drew foot traffic from a demographic they’d struggled to reach.

I have mixed feelings about BookTok’s influence on what people read (the homogeneity of recommendations can be frustrating), but its effect on independent bookstores has been largely positive. Any force that gets more people walking through the door is a good one.

The Publisher Relationship

One thing that rarely gets discussed in these narratives is the evolving relationship between independent bookstores and publishers. For a long time, the big publishers treated indies as an afterthought, focusing their marketing and co-op dollars on chains and Amazon. That’s shifted. Publishers now recognize that independent bookstores generate disproportionate word-of-mouth for new titles. A staff pick at an influential indie can start a chain reaction of handselling that no amount of Amazon advertising can replicate.

As a small publisher, I see this from both sides. When an independent bookseller gets behind one of our titles, the effect on sales is real and measurable. It’s not just the copies that store sells. It’s the recommendations, the social media posts, the book club selections, the conversations at the register. That kind of organic, trusted promotion is incredibly valuable.

Some publishers have responded by creating specific programs for independent stores, offering better terms, exclusive editions, and advance reader copies. Penguin Random House’s Independent Bookstore Marketing program and similar initiatives from other big publishers represent a real acknowledgment that these stores matter to the ecosystem.

What the Future Looks Like

I don’t want to be naively optimistic about this. Independent bookstores face real challenges. Commercial rents continue to rise in many cities. Labor costs are increasing. The supply chain disruptions of 2021-2022 created inventory headaches that smaller stores were less equipped to handle. And Amazon isn’t going anywhere; it still controls roughly half of all book sales in the United States.

But the stores that have survived the last twenty years have proven something important: there is a market for the bookstore experience that Amazon cannot serve. The question going forward isn’t whether indie bookstores will exist. It’s what they’ll look like. I think we’ll see more hybrid models, stores that combine books with coffee shops, co-working spaces, event venues, and other community functions. We’ll see more stores with strong online presences that complement rather than compete with the physical space. And we’ll see more stores that specialize, focusing on specific genres, communities, or interests rather than trying to stock everything.

The bookstore I visited in Portland, Ruth’s place, does all of this almost intuitively. She hosts a monthly gathering for local writers. She maintains a small but well-curated online store. She specializes in literary fiction and poetry, which means her regulars trust her taste completely. The store isn’t big, it isn’t flashy, and it isn’t trying to be Amazon. It’s trying to be the best version of itself, and that turns out to be enough.

I left that day with a novel I’d never heard of, recommended by Ruth herself. “You look like you need something quiet,” she said, handing me the book. She was right. I did. And that, in a sentence, is why independent bookstores survived. They pay attention in ways that algorithms never will.

If you’re looking for your next read and want to support a small press in the process, check out our catalog. We’d love for you to discover one of our titles at your local indie bookstore.