When Truly Render and Shaun Manning put their community bookshop Booksweet up for sale this spring, they had no shortage of offers.
Three years after taking over the Courtyard Shops storefront and much of the inventory of Bookbound Bookstore, the couple cited family considerations in choosing to pass the torch—not necessarily to the highest bidder, but as “a values-based decision of what we think will be sustainable,” Render says. Rather than “just rich people making stuff for rich people, we wanted to make sure first-time business owners could do this.”
Related: Bookbound Is Now Booksweet
Conversations about books, business, and community led to a comfort level with another local husband-wife team, Darcy Rhoden and Casey Thacker, who, along with Rhoden’s brother Louis and father Del, are the new owners as of July. “They were able to understand that inclusive, accessible nature of the book sales and collection here,” Render explains.
Rhoden, who’s lived in Ann Arbor since her undergraduate days at U-M, found it both funny and fitting that the sellers pulled up her book purchase history in advance of their first meeting.
“When we saw that it was going up for sale, really my goal was to keep the bookstore in our community, because I appreciate it as a customer and as a meeting place for other people,” she says. “You can come in here and have a really cool conversation with another customer, or one of us as the owners, and be able to get new recommendations, get new ideas, and share what it is you love about the store so that we can keep making sure that Booksweet is the community bookstore that people are looking for.”
That personal touch, as well as events and partnerships, are what help differentiate independent booksellers in the age of Amazon, Rhoden believes. “We have so many kids that come in and don’t necessarily know what they want, and being able to be in the store and read the back of the books and see exactly what it is that they have to choose from, I think, is something that they really can’t get online. Kids want to be able to touch something and flip the pages. And I think their parents getting them really excited about books is something that they do in their community bookstores.”
Booksweet will stay an owner-operated venture, even as Rhoden remains a sales manager “on the side” and her husband continues running his local farm, Pride and Produce. Her brother, Louis Rhoden, is focusing on community events and outreach.
Asked for a current book recommendation, she singles out The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst: “It is a really lovely, cozy fantasy about a librarian and a talking plant. And if that doesn’t make you happy, I don’t know what will.”
Booksweet, 1729 Plymouth Rd. (Courtyard Shops). (734) 929–4112. Tues.–Fri. noon–8 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m.–8 p.m., Sun. noon–6 p.m. Closed Mon. shopbooksweet.com
Got a retail or restaurant change? Email [email protected].