Earlier this year, American Booksellers Association CEO Allison Hill praised independent booksellers for “providing space for readers to discover books, passionate championing of debut and diverse authors, authentic third-place experiences, personal book recommendations, and character and personality in neighborhoods.” What she didn’t mention is that indies are inspiring authors, too—as a spate of new books across categories about bookstores and their impact can attest. While such 2024 offerings as Evan Friss’s The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore and Odile Hellier’s Village Voices: A Memoir of the Village Voice Bookshop focused on history and memoir, this year’s list goes further afield.

Just in time for this past Valentine’s Day, Brandeis University Press released Bookstore Romance: Love Speaks Volumes, a nonfiction title by former PW bookselling editor Judith Rosen collecting stories of people who discovered more than just a great read while browsing the shelves. Editor Sue Berger Ramin said that, after seeing multiple photos of couples getting engaged or married inside a bookstore online, she became eager to know their backstories—so she asked Rosen to investigate. The book, Ramin said, “is not only about people’s love for each other, but also their love for their local independent bookstores. It celebrates the important role that indies play in their communities.”

While there was a spike in Black-owned bookstores opening their doors after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, such bookstores have existed since before the Civil War—and publishers are finally taking notice, with two histories of Black bookselling slated for release this year. The first, out this month from Clarkson Potter, is Prose to the People: A Celebration of Black Bookstores by Katie Mitchell. Clarkson Potter executive editor Emma Brodie was “immediately blown away by the vibrance and heart of this project,” she said. “It’s both intimate and sweeping—a love letter to Black bookstores and a tribute to the fierce community they help uphold. There’s truly no other book quite like it.”

Until fall, that is. In November, Tiny Reparations Books will put out Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore by Char Adams, which explores the connections between Black booksellers and political movements from 1834 through the civil rights movement to the present day.

“I had been looking for a story like Hidden Figures, something with heroes that readers can rally around,” said executive editor Emi Ikkanda. “Black-owned bookstores have a thrilling history of activism. Here were Black booksellers in the 1960s facing down government surveillance, all because they were celebrating books by Black authors. And the book moves through to more recent waves of activism and local community building, and on to Black Lives Matter. In today’s age of book bans, this story of resistance and triumph is more urgent and needed than ever.”

Real love, fictional bookshops

Children’s songwriter (and former bookstore owner) Emily Arrow said she loves indies so much that she wrote a song thanking them for everything they do for their communities. That song since inspired her story about a girl who falls in love with her bookstore, published by Candlewick in March as Dear Bookstore, a picture book with illustrations by Geneviève Godbout.

“In every place I’ve lived,” Arrow said, “bookstores have been the first places to feel like home—especially Parnassus Books in Nashville, where I led weekly storytime sing-alongs for years, and Green Bean Books in Portland, Ore., where I spent countless hours soaking in the magic of a truly community-centered shop.” Bookstores, she added, are “havens for readers, writers, and dreamers” who crave “discovery, community, and belonging. Dear Bookstore is my love letter to them.”

Lily Braun-Arnold’s debut novel, The Last Bookstore on Earth (Delacorte, Jan.), is a work of YA fiction inspired by facts from the author’s life. Braun-Arnold, 20, is a junior at Smith College, who wrote the novel after she started working at Watchung Booksellers in Montclair, N.J., four years ago. The indie, she said, became her home away from home, and her fellow booksellers became close friends. With college on the horizon, “the bookstore remained constant,” she said. “Coworkers, customers, and even the books on the shelves created a sense of community I desperately needed. It’s something I realized is vital to surviving an apocalypse, fictional or otherwise.”

The book’s acquiring editor, Hannah Hill, immediately related to its portrayal of bookstores as safe havens. “I was instantly drawn to The Last Bookstore on Earth for its exploration of the enduring power of books in the face of a crumbling world, which feels more relevant every day,” she says. “I’m not exaggerating when I say that the reason I’m in this industry is to publish groundbreaking novels like this one.”

An earlier version of this story contained an error in the subtitle of Bookstore Romance and has been corrected.