I first met Teri Parks in 2018 when she cancelled my book-signing at the Midwest store she managed. The family-owned regional chain of bookstores had decided to close. I remember how passionately she spoke about opening her own bookstore someday despite the difficult financial climate and the road record of independent bookstores going under. Sure enough, she took that passion to the bank.
August 17, 2019, Teri opened Wordsmith Bookshoppe in my hometown of Galesburg, Illinois (population 32,000). We hadn’t had an actual store dedicated to books for ten years. With 2,200 square feet of retail space, Wordsmith Bookshoppe has books, magazines, and literary-themed gifts. When the store is fully stocked, they have 1,500 magazines (the largest inventory in West Central Illinois) and carry 18,000 books in 59 genres. Readers think they’ve died and gone to heaven when they walk in her door.
Then, disaster hit. March 2020. COVID-19. When the state mandate closed her down, instead of taking a vacation, she focused on her business plan, website, revamping children’s events, moving forward with book clubs, and re-evaluating long-term goals. Once the mandate let up, she was able to have curb-side pickup, and she was once again in business.
Teri employs multiple people from the local area, all of whom love books. They often hand-sell books to customers because they simply love to talk about books. Special connections with the schools in the area allow her to run a popular program where teachers can deduct 20% on books for their classrooms. Author signings are just starting up again since the second COVID wave, and window displays are heading into the holiday buying season.
I recruited a friend to go down and help with the initial inventory and putting books on the shelves, and that’s when we first met her family. (It’s a family business.) Teri’s father and husband helped with the initial carpentry and carpeting. Her mom puts together amazing window displays and deals with the unpacking and inventory of new books and magazines. Her daughter keeps an eye on the shelf inventory.
Teri not only survived the first year and the pandemic, but she is thriving due to her relationships in the reading and the business communities and her strong ties to local authors. When she says she loves to sell our books, she’s not kidding. Despite the obstacles that she’s faced and overcome, Teri Parks and her indie bookstore are in our community to stay.
Susan Van Kirk is the president of the Guppy Chapter, the online chapter of Sisters in Crime, and a writer of cozy mysteries. She lives at the center of the universe—the Midwest—and writes during the ridiculously cold and icy winters. Why leave the house and break something? Van Kirk taught forty-four years in high school and college and raised three children. Miraculously, she has low blood pressure.
Her Endurance mysteries include Three May Keep a Secret, Marry in Haste, The Locket: From the Casebook of TJ Sweeney, Death Takes No Bribes, and The Witch’s Child. She also wrote A Death at Tippitt Pond and has her new series beginning with Death in a Pale Hue coming out from Level Best Books in summer 2022. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime.
