The past, present, and future of our favorite bookstores

You’re listening to a public radio show. There’s a good chance you’re into books and the stores that sell them.

And what’s not to love? There might be few greater joys in life than a warm drink, a kind clerk with good recs, and the scent of freshly printed pages wafting through the air.

But in the age of the internet (and especially of Amazon) the future of the world’s independent book sellers looks murky. But not hopeless.

We sit down with a historian who’s written a book about book stores, an employee of a store that’s been around for a minute, and the owner of a store that’s pretty new to the business to talk about books, selling them, and what the future holds for these brick and mortar institutions.