From Passion to Profit: How I Opened a Successful Bookstore in Texas Hill Country (Part One of Two, Opening a Small Business)

We all eventually reach a point when we set aside our childish notions of fantasy when we need to find our place in the ongoing system, recognize the reality of our situation, and accept our role for whatever it may be. In short, we need to ‘grow up.’ It seemed perfectly normal to me when I was young for someone to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. As an adult, when I hear the question, I can’t help but recognize a hint of self-gratifying, twisted, dark humor. Adults ask children the question expecting to hear something like, “I want to be an astronaut!” Do you remember when you wanted to be an astronaut? The astronaut is, of course, the universal [insert dream job here] default. I wanted to be a writer. That answer, a writer—is a little too sensible, though borderline impractical. At least that’s the way my parents felt about the news.

Realistically, when someone asks, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” there’s a defeat knowing that in the rapidly approaching years to come, you will concede to the first and nearest job availability. Even careers in medicine or law are similarly perceived today as being an astronaut was thirty years ago. The purview isn’t necessarily because the framework of blue- or what-collar work has changed—like many people believe—it’s because our mindset of the framework of blue- or white-collar work has changed. On the one hand, this is related to our culture's feelings toward education, people are either disillusioned by our education system or dissatisfied with the mounting costs of higher education. Truthfully, people merely don’t want to work.

It’s a chicken-or-egg matter, what comes first, being miserable at work or resigning ourselves to jobs we have no interest in working? I’m not sure how most people, especially the younger generations, would respond to the question if asked. I can’t help but recognize a spiritual aspect to the concept. In the last hundred years, our culture has experienced a spiritual shift. People are disenchanted with religion and shun completely any association with what might even approach religious ideology. There’s a lot that the business of religion has done wrong, but there are also foundations to the spiritism of religion that are substantially right. One good side effect of religious belief is the inherent, albeit spontaneous struggle of soul-searching, another word for it is self-awareness. We are sacrificing self-importance beyond a surface-level struggle. When you remove something as enveloping as religion from your life there will be secondary effects that you haven’t considered; for the sake of your subconscious (and person), you need to supplement those absent constructions with something, I suggest meditation.

Discovering who you are is important, knowing what you are passionate about is the first step toward building a fulfilling and prosperous life. Hint, you’re miserable at work because you’re not fulfilled by the work you’re doing, it has nothing to do with how many hours a week you work, how much you get paid, where you work, your coworkers, or your boss. Find the work you’re passionate about and none of that will matter to you. It took me a long time to learn or relearn that. I think we all come into this world feeling certain truths, we may not be able to understand or intellectualize them, but we inherently know these truths, and passion is one. I am a writer; when we’re young and some truths are presented as a choice, we start to believe that choice and second guess what we thought we knew instinctively. I’m not good at being anything but a writer and have years of wasted effort behind me as evidence. I have failed at so many things merely because I’m not equipped to succeed in areas, I care nothing about.

I was young the first time I was told that writing wasn’t a practical life goal, I was extremely young; and because I was so young it wasn’t like someone handed me a stick and said, “Don’t use this stick,” it was expressed to me as a veritable truth—I cannot be a writer, period. So, I guess, I had to figure out what I could do. Not much else interested me, until I took a job at Borders Books, Music, and Café, when I was 18 years old. I loved it. I loved being surrounded by books, music, and coffee all day, and like-minded people, perhaps not minded-exactly-like, but with common ground, and especially with room for dissent. Relationships allowing for disagreements are relationships with unshakeable bonds. I worked at Borders for a while. Over the years to come, I worked at the Texas A&M Bookstore, Hastings Entertainment, Barnes & Noble Booksellers (at three different stores), Op. Cit. Books, and Wardrobe Books.

I grew up in the Texas Hill Country. When I was twenty, I dropped everything I was doing, packed my car to the brim, and started driving. Ten years later I went back to Texas with a plan. A month after moving back to Texas, I leased space in a multi-vendor mall-type venue and opened a bookstore. I called it Wardrobe Books. In the years prior, I started developing an idea and a business plan that would eventually mold my bookstore into the dream bookstore I’d been imagining for years. No, owning and operating a bookstore wasn’t my passion, but I came to acknowledge that it was the next best thing. I love books, books elicit a visceral response, the feel and smell of a book—especially older books—books awaken something inside all of us that is fragile and exceptional, the value of a book is priceless. We reread books from our childhood that spark memories or feelings we haven’t touched in decades, within the pages of a book we might find momentary reprieves from our stress and worries; we feel something indescribable when a book has the author’s signature, when a book is a first printing, or when we read inscriptions between strangers in its pages.

I didn’t start selling books for the sake of selling books, there’s a lasting connection in the exchange. Books absorb the feelings and energy of a person, a time, a belief—mock me all you want it’s true. Books are an imprint of our emotional selves; collectively waiting, and sometimes extremely patiently, to be opened, and books will, in exchange for being opened, offer us anything anyone can imagine, they will open our minds and hearts, tangibly, intellectually, and viscerally. I started selling books online. I learned that the best websites for selling books are (or were) Abebooks, Alibris, and Biblio.com. Abebooks has since sold to Amazon, Alibris is a decent site, but not well-known outside of collector's circles, Biblio is the best online book exchange now, though relatively unknown. These sites are focused on selling specifically to collectors, which is an interesting community, and exploring the community of book collectors as an inexperienced bookseller is an invaluable tool, specifically focusing on the language these communities use, to describe the condition of a book for example.

I created my accounts and uploaded a few dozen titles; the books in my inventory I collected shopping in used bookstores, estate sales, library sales, and garage sales; at first, I sought books whose value was dismissed before reaching for any book in good condition. One example of the benefit of this manner of book-buying, I found a signed, first printing of Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose for $12 in a used bookstore, it’s worth $1,200. There are outdated books that I read (I’m sure there are updated versions available) about buying and selling used books that share tips, such as buying a book in a region where an author might not be as popular and selling those books in areas where the author is popular, increasing the book’s value; for example, buying a Cormac McCarthy first printing in a bookstore in Washington D.C., where he’s less popular, and selling the book in the American southwest where McCarthy’s books are in demand; when something is in demand its value increases.

I started writing my business plan while I was working at Op. Cit. Books in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Op. Cit. reinvented what a bookstore could be, the founder modeled her store from Books Inc., in California’s Bay Area. Op. Cit. Books was an amazing bookstore and what Noemi taught me about the industry is invaluable, she’s amazing (outside of having zero people skills). When writing my business plan, my late mornings and afternoons were spent working at the Op. Cit., my evenings were balanced between parenting my then-wife’s two children and writing a monster business plan. My business plan was incredibly well-researched and detailed after I was finished, taking me a solid year to complete. I explored the history of print, writing, and bound books. I included a step-by-step schedule of the store’s daily operations, the number of shifts throughout the day, how many employees were scheduled to work each shift, what I would pay my employees, how I would train my employees, and what behaviors I would look for in an employee. I included procedures for buying books (new and used), where I would buy new books, where I would find used books, how I would decide on used books brought in my customers, how I would price books (new, used, remainder, rare, and collectible), and that my store would have a heavier literary fiction presence than other genres. I included projections of daily, monthly, and yearly finances, marketing, advertising, inventory, supplemental inventory, taxes, insurance, permits, etc., everything was included in detail in my business plan. My business plan was the blueprint in black-and-white for my store. It was the backbone.

It was important too to address the changing industry. Even today, after decades of people spreading misinformation about how print books are history, the new standard is eBooks, more people than not have a book on them wherever they go. The print industry is not only not dying, but also thriving. I love one thing about Social Media, how people make thoughtless predictions that never come true, and then lazily move on with life as if nothing happened. Digital e-readers became popular in the United States in 2006, people were saying even before then that bookstores were a dying industry; for those of you who are my age and have trouble reconciling that it’s already 2022 and that 2010 feels like yesterday, 2006 was almost twenty years ago. Books are not only still around they are as or more popular than ever; so, give it a rest already. I could list mountains of statistics that most people won’t believe anyway, the truth is that over the last five years more independent bookstores have opened than in the previous thirty years. The best question to ask yourself when you’re considering opening a bookstore isn’t if you should but where you should.

Researching my business plan, I learned that there isn’t a single corporate bookstore within 60 miles of the city limits of Santa Fe, New Mexico. There are, however, more than forty independent bookstores within the city limits. There are only five U.S. cities that have more bookstores per square mile. When you’re opening a bookstore there are things you want to think about. Competition is something that everyone thinks about when opening a small business regardless of the industry, while there are good reasons to acknowledge this metric (such as competing with forty different independent bookstores), competition is not the most important metric, merely because every business, regardless of the industry, competes for dollars. You compete with every small business. Another thing to remember is that books are not essential; some people might claim they are but realistically books are a comfort. People who read routinely are college-educated, middle- to upper-class with disposable income. That’s your community standard; opening a bookstore in a community that doesn’t meet those requirements and hoping your store encourages people to read is a bad business decision. The point here is that before you open your business 1.) write a business plan, the benefits of it are substantial, and 2.) exhaust every possible idea you can research that might influence your business even if only in a small way.

Anyone considering opening a small business should familiarize themselves with the Small Business Association (their website is, sba.gov). The Business Guide and Learning Platform are invaluable tools that will guide you through steps you likely haven’t before considered. The SBA will help you to acquire a small business loan, many banks have an SBA representative working at the branch, somewhat independent of the bank. I’m not the biggest fan of borrowing from banks to finance a startup, especially since the alternatives to banks, like familiar investors or nonprofits, usually take a vested interest in the success of a business when banks care only about their return. The difference between the success and failure of your business could well be how you received your overhead capital. Don’t limit yourself to bank loans. I wanted to open a bookstore in a small- or medium-sized town or city, and I looked into several throughout the United States.

First, I considered Massachusetts, the state with the largest number of college graduates in the nation; California’s Bay Area has the greatest number of college graduates per square mile. I researched Massachusetts, North Carolina, Michigan, Illinois, California, and Texas before narrowing my search to California and Texas. I excluded Massachusetts because there are more bookstores per 100,000 in Massachusetts than anywhere else in the country, besides New York City. Traffic into your store is important, but a unique thing about bookstores is that people will browse a bookstore similarly to browsing a museum, you want to know that most of the people walking into your store have a reason for being there.

One area particularly in Oakland was a developing district inspired by author Jack London. Jack London Square is right on the coast of the Oakland Inner Harbor in California, and Jack London spent a great deal of his time between First Street and the estuary in Oakland when he was growing up as a young writer. This neighborhood is now a shopping district named for London. There are no bookstores there. There are no bookstores in Jack London Square. The Bay Area is a constant swell of people, like an unsure grip of a dilated balloon, wheezing people out, and then distending. Though I wasn’t excited about living in California (again) the prospect was too promising to ignore. People in California like to read 1.) because they’re educated, and 2.) because they spend a lot of time commuting to and from work. Put a book in their hands.

Personal reasons moved me back to Texas. The Hill Country was still second on my list of possibilities and so mitigating circumstances were decided for me. The Texas Hill Country is a beautiful area that’s made up of Boerne, Kerrville, Fredericksburg, Dripping Springs, and New Braunfels, there are several smaller towns scattered throughout; on the eastern border of the Hill Country is San Antonio and Austin is on the north, more or less. There are four bookstores and more than 50 colleges and universities within a two-hour radius of Boerne, Texas, where I was heading. The Texas Hill Country is one of the fastest-growing areas in the country. The people of Texas, on average, don’t read a great deal. Most students in Texas after graduating find a job out of state and leave. I saw that as a fun challenge, an opportunity to look for creative ways to engage people, such as building a community (and selling coffees and teas).

          When I moved back to Texas, I scheduled a meeting with an SBA representative in San Antonio, Texas, and we reviewed my business plan and discussed my vision for Wardrobe Books. We talked for a long while. He made a real effort to approve my loan request, however, because I spent my twenties living fairly low-key, which is to say that I wasn’t developing credit (I had no credit), they refused my loan request. So, I went for it alone. That’s when I leased a small space in the multi-vendor mall-type venue, this venue was essentially a refugee flea market for poor businesses. Most of my bookshelves I pieced together using cinder block and 2x4s’ (that was a lot of effort, despite the aesthetic of the shelves, which was nice, but I’m not sure I would do that again). I set up chairs and couches, small seating areas as space allowed, and a self-serve tea kiosk. I’d been collecting my inventory for years. I had books in boxes hiding in closets, under furniture, behind blankets, and anywhere that I could store boxes of books I did. Loading and hauling everything from New Mexico to Texas was a tremendous effort. After a few weeks, Wardrobe Books was ready to open its doors.

Business was good. Sales were better than I expected them to be early on, and my clientele rapidly grew. The work was almost more than I could handle, and I was doing it myself. When you start a small business with plans to work on-site, plan to work more hours than you’ve worked before, and plan not to pay yourself for—the best case for your business—two years. My new goal was to throw as much money back into my store to move into larger spaces at reasonable intervals until I was in the location I wanted and had the resources to operate my bookstore how I imagined. At this stage, it’s a good idea to keep things rolling, the worst thing is to settle in your ways and let operations stagnate. Try new things, not all of them will work, but there’s a lesson in everything you try. Trial and error are your best friend. New small business owners can get comfortable in a niche afraid to try anything new because they don’t want to ruin what might appear to be a good thing. Don’t do that.

          In my imagination, walking into my bookstore I can feel the aged wood floors yield a little to my weight walking past the door frame, I can hear the give of the wood whine beneath my feet, and that’s when I first catch the scent of old books. In the store are five, maybe six unmatched oak tables placed throughout the rooms and arranged to clutch the morning and early afternoon light through the windows. On the tables are stacks of books. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves against every wall not preoccupied with windows, a few with bookcase ladders roll from one corner to another. There are three dim hollows with couches and chairs, an electric fireplace, and desk lamps on side tables for reading. The faint sounds of music overhead came from everywhere and nowhere. Wardrobe Books was small and child-like learning and growing; I have a vision in my head of what it would be like when it was older, more mature with its own identity and experiences. This was the next best thing.

Twice I moved my store, and after more than two years, and several months in the most recent location, my building sold; when my lease expired and I couldn’t find another suitable location (well any location), I closed the doors of Wardrobe Books. There are things you worry about interfering with your business. Concerns about not making enough money, paying your employees, and covering rent, so many things might interrupt a good thing, more things are infuriatingly out of your hands, such as when a building you are leasing sells. There’s nothing you can do. The stability of the ownership of my building was something I didn’t think about when I was looking for a location. When you’re looking for a location, you’re not looking for the best possible location right now, you’re looking for the best location five or ten years from now. “just getting a business up and running,” doesn’t always build the best foundations for your business down the road, and that’s an important thing to keep in mind.

          Admittedly, I felt defeated for several months, I didn’t know what to do. I spent those months helping a longtime family friend who owns a restaurant in town with catering gigs. It was fun but importantly it gave me time to think and allowed me to be creative instead of feeling like I needed to forget this entrepreneurship thing and get back to the ‘real world.’ I decided to research what it takes to open an online business, specifically how a small, independent online book retailer might stack up with the rest. I had never built a website before, but the first step was to open my laptop and start my research. The first step is always to take it, and so…