I am a habitual visitor of local bookshops (and I'm fortunate to have multiple good options near me despite not living in a city), and I almost always walk out with something; my physical TBR pile is growing quite formidable. So I don't know that I was necessarily the target audience for this book, but I have been seeing it show up frequently, usually right on the checkout counter of . And I really enjoyed this author's first book - How to Resist Amazon and Why - so it seemed logical to give this one a go.

It's structured around visiting specific real-world bookstores, interviewing the owner(s) to learn about a particular issue or hardship they faced, how they overcame it, and how to extrapolate that takeaway to your local community. Straightforward enough, and allowed for a formulaic and predictable format through each chapter. There is a bias towards stores in Midwestern states, but the author admits this is because he basically had to fund his travel out of pocket which meant lots of roadtrips from his base in Kansas. Can't fault him for that, but I did notice it.

This book is heavy on anecdotes and personal stories of quirky owners, and surprisingly light on hard numbers. Yes Amazon has indirectly caused bookstores to close over the past two decades, but I would've appreciated even just a ballpark amount. There's also a bit of survivorship bias because each chapter featured a success story, which we're lead to believe is the exception and not the rule, but we don't get any interviews with former owners who failed with a lesson of what not to do.

I sympathize the concept and overall message, and this certainly doesn't have me second-guessing my approach of buying 99% of my books in-person, but I wish it occasionally had taken a step back from the feel-good stories and offered a more technical and evidence-based argument for the "Why" portion of the book.