Arts Alive San Antonio

By RUDY ARISPE, Contributor

In early March 2020, Elizabeth Jordan, general manager of the Nowwhere Bookshop in Alamo Heights, and the store’s owner, author Jenny Lawson, were making last minute preparations for their grand opening slated for that April. The space, located in the former El Paso Imports at 5154 Broadway, had just undergone a complete buildup to transform it into a functional bookstore, and excitement abounded as Lawson’s dream of opening a bookshop was about to be realized.

And then the pandemic struck.

“I had just placed all my inventory orders with publishers when it became clear that the world was shutting down. We tried to cancel as many orders as we could,” said Jordan.

But they did not cancel the dream. Only a few months later, the two enterprising women opened their inventory to online orders and curbside service. They also launched a Book of the Month club, which turned out to be the secret to success for the store which never had a chance to actually open its doors to the public. They expected about 100 or so people to sign up, but to their surprise, they ended up with 2,700 members. Each month, Lawson selects a book, which is then shipped to all the members to read, and later discuss in Zoom gatherings.

 “Business is great,” noted Jordan. “We’ve been fortunate. We are busy enough to pay the rent and our employees. So, we are nor feeling the pressure to open our doors just yet.”

But other independent booksellers have done so, including the Twig Book Shop, probably San Antonio’s best-known independent purveyor of books and magazines that cover every subject imaginable.

“Bookstores are often the living rooms of the community,” is how manager Claudia Maceo described her place of work and similar establishments. “People come together not only to share and delve deeper into topics and worlds they are familiar with, but to discover new worlds and interests they may not even have known were there.”

She further pointed out that locally-owned and operated bookstores usually carry books by local authors, organize readings for entertainment, edification and celebration events, and often go into the community to support the literacy efforts of schools and various organizations. And in a way, “the staff members become emissaries of the community to visitors passing through.”

Book lovers everywhere would completely agree with her. There’s hardly a better place to spend your free time than browsing through rows of shelves, offering knowledge, insight and entertainment, from fiction and poetry to biography, science, history, philosophy, and just about everything else. San Antonio authors love the Twig, which has hosted innumerable book-release events before COVID-19 changed how we live, work and have fun. But some readings are still held outside.

The shop also carries a lot of Texas-centered titles in their Texana section, an important addition in San Antonio. “Texans are proud,” said Maceo. “We want to know our history. It’s more than just the Alamo.”

A less know book haven is a place at 5645 S. Flores St. called Dead Tree Books, the only such establishment on the city’s South Side. Owned and operated by Kenneth and Lisa Johnson, it opened in 2016 to sell used and inexpensive books. The couple are big readers themselves.

“We are bibliophiles,” said Kenneth. “That’s what brought us together. She walked into my apartment and saw shelves full of books and knew we were a match.”

Located inside a 2,000-square-feet of cramped space, Dead Tree Books is brimming from floor to ceiling with hardbacks and paperbacks of every genre, along with CDs and DVDs. Kenneth estimates its current inventory at about 30,000 titles. “A lot of people like to bring us books and don’t want any money for them,” he observed.

Though they were forced to shutter their doors for months, the owners are relieved to see a steady stream of customers since they reopened. In addition, online sales have picked up, too. And Kenneth is an exceptionally obliging seller, who says he is willing to deliver books to the customer’s house “if it makes you feel safer.”

On a recent Friday afternoon, South Side resident Alice De Leon, stopped by to pick up a Bible she had ordered, the third one she has purchased from Dead Tree Books. “We’ve never had a bookstore on the South Side before,” noted De Leon, a retired San Antonio Water System clerk. “I like it here because they have everything I’m looking for.”

And North Siders have discovered Dead Tree Books, as well. About 25% of its customers come from that side of town and even from Boerne. “I have found that they like individual bookstores,” said Kenneth. “They’ll come in and then come back again and again.”

And speaking of the North Side, there are a couple of book treasure-troves there, too. Nestled among the shops at Oak Hills Center in the Medical Center area, you’ll find Nine Lives Books, which opened at its present location, 7959 Fredericksburg Rd., in 2020, after moving from its original home on NW Loop 410 near the Callaghan & Evers intersection. Suzanne Farnsworth opened the independent bookshop in 2004 but sold it in 2010 to new owner Michael Roberts, although she still works for Nine Lives as the general manager. When the landlord at the original location didn’t renew their lease last February, they were forced to look for another space.

“We had 30 days to move,” said Farnsworth. “We had 75,000 items in a 4,000-square-foot store and we were one of the largest independent bookstores in South Texas. Now we’re in a 1,000-square-foot space with 12,000 items.”

After being given such a short notice to relocate, Nine Lives held a massive sale and also gave away nearly 30,000 books and other merchandize. “We let people pull up their trucks and take what they wanted. It was good for the community to have something to read during the lockdown,” she explained.

The business struggled for three months since it had no revenue in between closing one shop and opening another. But it’s not called Nine Lives for nothing. True to its name, the bookstore is steadily gaining momentum and building a new life for itself.

“The thing that is hurting us the most right now is not being able to come up with (the money) for our building sign,” said the manager. “There’s not enough traffic yet because the majority of our established clientele for the past 16 years thinks we went out of business. And we don’t have the resources to advertise.”

However, she is hopeful about the future, encouraged by the trickle of new customers. She’s observed that those who come in appear to treasure the traditional shopping experience.

“I have new customers every day. They walk in and love the smell of books; they love the hunt for that unusual item,” she noted, adding that many patients and professionals from the Medical Center stop by. And a lot of them buy children’s books. “That’s an active market. Parents buy five books per month for the kids to read,” she said.

Managing a bookstore is hardly an easy task but it’s easier – much easier – if you love books yourself and enjoy helping others to find something special, which is true for all the booksellers we spoke to.

“I love matching people with the books they want and finding something that is going to turn a person who thinks of themselves as a non-reader into a reader,” said Twig Book Shop’s Maceo. “Our highest priority is bringing people together and sharing stories. It’s not just about the stories in a book, but our personal stories, too. It’s a legacy I’m happy and proud to be part of.”

Long-time customers revisit these establishments again and again because they, too, appreciate that human touch and the guidance they get from knowledgeable personnel. Trinity University professor, James Ivy, Ph.D., is one of them. He has been coming to the Twig since the 1990s.

“I can buy any book online that I can find here, and obviously the Twig can’t stock every book I might want to buy on a whim. Fortunately, they can order pretty much any book,” Ivy said. “But at the Twig, I’m buying a book from a reader. If I am not looking for a particular title, I can get a suggestion from a knowledgeable fellow book lover rather than from an algorithm.”

What customers also enjoy is the sheer pleasure of stumbling upon something new that intrigues them, as several people mentioned.

For the time being, however, it’s clear that sellers and readers are settling for a hybrid experience- personal visits to bookstores and a myriad of virtual events. Booksellers have been inventive in that regard. In addition to book club projects like the one organized by the Nowhere Bookshop, Dan Cullen, senior strategy officer of the American Booksellers Association, listed quite a few others, such as Instagram Live story times for kids; Zoom author interviews; Facebook Live group meetings; online mixers where authors and sellers discuss books, and virtual writing workshops.

And they are sometimes delivering books to readers in-person, as Kenneth Johnson does.

• Dead Tree Books, 5645 Flores St. #105, 78214, 210-595-7121, www.deadtreebooks.net
• Nine Lives Books, 7959 Fredericksburg, Ste 119, 78229; www.ninelivesbooks.com
• Nowhere Bookshop, 5154 Broadway, 78209; 210-640-7260; www.nowherebookshop.com
• Twig Bookshop, 306 Pearl Parkway, Unit 106, 78215; 210-826-6411; www.thetwig.com