 "Photo: Sonya Ekstrom | The Spectator")
 "Photo: Sonya Ekstrom | The Spectator")
Though products such as Kindle and Nook are slowly replacing books, in Seattle second-hand bookstores are confident they have a secure place in the community.
“One of the reasons you go into shops is so that you can get ideas about things you didn’t know about,” says Kris Minta, owner of Spine and Crown on East Pine Street. “You can’t do that very well online. That’s the place of the shop, and that is the duty of a used bookstore owner: to present this panoply of ideas in an attempt to inspire people.”
It is this desire to share ideas with customers that also keeps Seattle’s used bookstores from growing too competitive.
“Each one of us helps each other. The more used bookstores, the better off we all are,” says Becca West, manager of Half Price Books. West says she refers customers to other nearby shops when Half Price doesn’t have what they are looking for.
“Being able to put the book in their hand is what’s important,” West says.
While readers can find adventure, romance and mystery in the books themselves, there is much to discover in the stories of the stores, too. Unlike new bookstores, second-hand shops offer both vintage and out-of-print reads, and each shop develops a character that keeps customers coming back.
Twice Sold Tales, for example, has several cats in each of its locations. They originally arrived in the store because of mice, says owner and founder Jamie Litton, but now the cats are part of the local business’ charm.
Down the street, Spine and Crown offers a small, intimate storefront with tall shelves lining every wall and stacks of books condensed in corners like puddles. A spiral staircase leads customers past book-inspired art installations to a second floor loft with more books.
Sometimes the customers are the ones supplying the bookstores with stories. West, who has been working for Half Price Books for almost 10 years, remembers buying a one-of-a-kind book from one young woman.
“She had a very young baby with her, and she had one book, and it was wrapped in a plastic bag and she was crying when she walked in the door,” she says. “It was a book of witchcraft from the early 1700s.”
The book featured hand-drawn illustrations and pages in the back had been filled in with the young woman’s family tree.
“It was a book that was beyond value,” West says.
However, bookshop owners admit that reading—and readers in general—have changed with the introduction of the Internet.
“I would have a sale, and people would be lined up to come in, and those people were hungry for content,” Litton says. “They now just stare at a screen and get content off the Internet.”
Book lovers agree there is a romantic aspect of reading from the aged yellowed pages of a second-hand book. Yet, there is a practical aspect to e-readers, which condense numerous books into one hand-held device.
“I have an intimate relationship with books, yet I want an e-reader,” West says. “I think there’s a place for both. I don’t see that as heresy to a book.”
Even as technology advances, bookshop owners believe their stores offer something invaluable to customers.
“There are thousands of life-changing doors in my shop and people could walk out with one of those doors,” Minta says. “If you aren’t always discovering, what is life worth living for? My shop is to make that philosophy concrete."
Seattle’s second-hand bookshops hold fast to the hope that as long as there are readers, there will be books. And as long as there are curious readers, there will be second-hand bookshops.
Jennifer may be reached at jwilliams@su-spectator.com.
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