Interview: Sarah Timmke at Bound bookstore in York, Pennsylvania
by June Locco
A bookshop is an almost magical place where stories and ideas exist. Like any book lover, my day is made better by just the opportunity to share the space for even a short time.
A few months ago, I was at a little coffee shop that I frequent in York, Pennsylvania, and spotted a business that had moved into the same shopping center. A sage green sign with leaves sprouting from the open pages of a book told me this could only be one thing—a bookshop. I was thrilled to see an independent store opening, rather than closing. Sarah Timmke and Chuck Blair had recently moved Bound from York City to the Olde Tollgate Village on Queen Street, and I had the opportunity to chat with Sarah about the shop.
As I typed up this post after the interview, I thought of the places where I’d add a note that Sarah laughed, or I laughed, but I realized that those notes would be everywhere. We laughed throughout most of the chat, and as I played back the recording, I heard the sound of others talking and laughing in the background, because Sarah has created a space for community, and that particular day the cozy sitting area was occupied by a group of knitters who regularly meet at the store. We need spaces like this where people can just be. And at just about an hour north of Baltimore, it’s worth a visit, and you’re Bound to find a book you love. See what I did there?
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Thank you for taking the time to talk with me about your beautiful store. I recently read Libby Page’s This Book Made Me Think of You, and people are always telling Alfie, the bookshop owner, that he has the best job in the world—reading all day. Not realizing what the job entails, they’re surprised by all of the heavy lifting and dusting involved. What are your thoughts?
I could not have found a truer statement! People do say that. I’ve had customers ask if I’ve read every one of the books that we stock. We have 4,000 books! But I’m unboxing, I’m shelving, I’m the event planner, I’m the social media manager, I’m the PR person, I tag everything, stock everything, receive all the books.
Oh, my gosh. I’m overwhelmed just hearing this! I have to admit my dream of working in a bookshop didn’t include all of that!
It’s a lot more. My husband does the ordering—we do that together. I answer emails, phone calls, and text messages. Facebook and Instagram messages. I do the decorating, the cleaning, and mopping the floors. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually read in the store.
Did you expect it to be like that?
I expected a little bit more downtime. I thought that I’d have time to do a little artwork, and some creative stuff in the downtime, but that doesn’t happen. I think the events and the social media are what take the most time. But yes, that’s such an accurate statement that people do think we have more time to read.
I guess with social media and BookTok and such, there’s a lot more of that kind of work than, say, twenty years ago?
Yes, which all helps sales. You don’t have to pay for ads in the paper, or radio slots, or the traditional forms of PR. It is all free, but it’s constant. You have to stay on it, and there’s the expectation to post regularly, and to constantly think of new content. My husband works on bookstore stuff in the evenings after work. It’s a lot, and we just have to forgive ourselves and tell ourselves we’ll get there.
What is something that people would be surprised to learn about running a bookshop, besides that you don’t get to read all day?
I think I’d say that people would be surprised to learn that it’s more of a job for an extrovert than you would think. A lot of people think when you own a bookstore, you’re an introvert, and I am, but as a business owner, you’re extroverting a lot. And the expectation is that it’s a quiet little bookstore job, but you’re chatting all day.
So, how did you choose the name of the store, Bound. I mean, obviously books are bound, but what made you decide on the name?
It’s funny. We went back and forth. We were trying to find something that was “this and this,” or somehow combining our names, and that kind of felt like the trendy thing. I don’t know how it hit me, but I was driving for my job that I had when we were planning to open a shop. I was doing preschool vision screenings at the time, so I’d go to different preschools, and I was driving and thinking about a name, and for some reason it just hit me. And I asked myself, why are we trying to do two words? Let’s just do one, and what about Bound? Then I thought, books are bound, but we also wanted it to be a community space, where people can come together, and be bound together, and with the plants, it just felt very grounded, and kind of fit everything together in one word.
It really is perfect.
Yes, except that a lot of people think we actually bind books. We get a lot of calls and emails where people say, “I have an old book and I’m looking for a book binder.” And I have to tell them that as much as our name suggests it, we don’t really do that at all.
Okay, I have read and loved so many books about bookshops, and in many of them, the shop is almost a character in the book, and in most it’s clear that the bookshop itself has a personality. What is your bookstore’s personality?
I think the plants play a lot into it. We have just a natural, clean aesthetic. A lot of people comment on the vibe when they come in, and I love the vibe here. I don’t know exactly, in words, what the vibe is. It’s a little mid-century, because we both like that style. Our house is nothing like it, so I think we wanted to kind of translate that here. It’s kind of like a modern, clean, grounded, soothing vibe? It’s a lot of things.
I agree. And it’s unexpected. You don’t expect to step in from a parking lot in a shopping center to find this space. It’s light, and the windows have those grids that aren’t just large plates of glass. It’s more like a house than a retail space. Almost greenhouse-y.
Yes, and we decorate with the plants, so they’re part of the space. I like that. I could go with greenhouse vibe. And it’s true, every bookstore has a vibe. I see that when I look at new release day on Tuesdays, and look at other bookstores that I follow, and see what they’ve stocked. We all get different books. There are some overlaps, but you kind of match the books to your store and the personality.
How do you decide what to order?
With a lot of time! My husband was just listening to a podcast and said he was shocked to hear how many books come out every year. Self-published as well, all books with an ISBN number. It’s three million a year! And we calculated we are probably looking at maybe one percent of those a year. You go through your distributor and see what the popular ones are. They’re arranged kind of by demand. We follow certain authors we like, and such, but it’s a lot of reading descriptions of books. And we’ll look at the covers, and sometimes I just see one that I can tell by the cover. That plays a factor in whether people will even pick it up. There’s no perfect formula, and we don’t always get it right. Or you pick one that you think won’t be popular, and order only three of them and sell out instantly. It’s a science, but we haven’t mastered it.
And a lot of luck?
Yes. And you look at The New York Times and the Booker list. Reese Witherspoon has a book club. Jenna Bush has a book club. Then there’s Good Morning America, and Oprah, and you have to make sure you order all of those because people come looking for them.
That “don’t judge a book by its cover” thing? We do it anyway.
Exactly. Particularly if it’s an unknown author. The cover plays a factor. Sometimes a book is really amazing, and I have to tell people, “Don’t pay attention to the cover, it’s a really great book.” But if a bookseller isn’t pushing that, you may not pick up the book.
What trends in reading habits are you seeing?
It’s not my genre, but romantasy has been huge. And books with sprayed edges. They’re beautiful, and sometimes people will see them, and even if they have already read the book, they’ll see the edges and want that version.
With the sprayed edges they fit the trend of putting books backward on the shelves, which I personally can’t imagine, yet I see social media debates about that. And books as décor.
That’s another thing I would say I’m seeing with trends. I think it’s actually becoming cool to read. I think that BookTok has helped with that. On BookTok you talk about everything you read, and it’s almost like a competition of how much you can read, and what books you’ve read, and I don’t remember that ever being the situation in the past.
Thinking back to when I was a teenager, it was the opposite of cool if you read a lot.
Right. Exactly. I was a total nerd. And that’s a good trend. I’m glad we’re moving in that direction.
Okay, I promise I’m almost finished. Do you have a favorite memory or unexpected moment as a bookseller that you want to share?
Hmm. There are milestones you hit. One year in the store, or your first day open. Those are big. I think it’s the smaller quieter moments, though, the things customers say. I do remember one customer telling me that he always feels better leaving than when he came in here. And that really just made me feel like I was doing something, for good. Because you kind of wonder, I have a retail store, but what does that mean? What am I offering to the world? Not that I need to offer something to the world, but you want a life that has a purpose. And you’re like, I’m selling books, what is the purpose there? I think at that moment I realized I was offering more than just that to people. I was offering a space, a safe space, and a place where people can feel comfortable, and themselves, and seen. I think that was important to me. It’s those little things. Comments that kids make are hilarious or really sweet. A mix of the big milestones and the little things. Or when people come in and you see the look on their face, and they say, “Oh, I really like it in here.”
So, last question, I promise. I saw your sign advertising Independent Bookstore Day. What do you hope the future of independent bookstores will be? No pressure, of course.
Truly? I would like all of the independent bookstores, bookstores in general, because I love Barnes and Noble and have wonderful memories of the big two-story store in Towson, to just bring the market back to individual stores. People come in and say, “I can get this cheaper on Amazon,” and yes, they can, because Amazon isn’t making any money from the books. But bringing the market back to the individual stores would be really nice.
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Yes, it would be really nice. There is something about bookstores that we need, something that we can’t find in the same app or website where we buy paper towels, or vitamins, or that weird little brush that cleans the spout on our water bottles. Call it the vibe, or the personality. Books are therapy and a place to find what we didn’t know we needed. I am holding out hope for a long and bright future for bookstores and booksellers, and in the meantime maybe I’ll see you among the stacks.
You can visit Bound online at Boundbookshop.com or in person at 2555 South Queen Street in York, Pennsylvania.