Four months into running The Phoenix, Stef pauses to tell the origin story for newer listeners—and to reconnect longtime listeners with how far she's come.

Chapter 1 was the false start: trying to acquire an existing used bookstore in Marin. Complicated negotiations, emotional turbulence, a few snafu decisions while still learning to be a business person. The turning point came when she walked away and decided to build instead of buy.

Chapter 2 was the building phase: mapping Marin for book deserts, naming the store, tackling the business infrastructure (EIN, LLC, Seller's Permit), and hitting estate sales weekly to stockpile inventory. She'd learned she needed 15,000 books before opening. Her house became a storage unit. She started to concern the concept of "mattering"—adding value and feeling valued—as the foundation for everything. Then came the landlord gauntlet: months of near-misses, being outbid by businesses with deeper pockets. Each rejection, she now sees, cleared space for something better.

Chapter 3 began when she found a space she wanted before even seeing it, just because the landlords were amazing. She filled the tiny store with picture books and board books and middle-grade readers and YA, hired teenagers who understood the trends she didn't, and opened May 13th to immediate, sustained popularity. Four months in: repeat customers are solid and keeping the lights on, but new customer traffic has dropped since two anchor restaurants closed.

So now she's back in full scale marketing mode. School partnerships, growing book clubs into real events, Bannned Book Week activations, a winter reading challenge, preschool story times, books-to-movie events with a local friend, guerrilla postcards, newsletter swaps, and influencer outreach (still solving that mystery)!

One milestone: 5,000 podcast downloads? Maybe that's a lot?

Show Notes:

• Phoenix Noir (mysteries/thrillers): coming October 21st, The Final Problem by Monique King (closed-box mystery)
• Books to Movie Club: Sense and Sensibility October 16th with Soul Sisters (Mill Valley)
• Banned Book Week: October 4-10, 5% of sales to Penn America (fighting book censorship in schools/libraries)
• Winter Reading Challenge: Thanksgiving & winter breaks, signatures from local businesses, free decorated sugar cookie from Madrona Bakery in January
• Preschool story times: launching today!!
• School partnerships available with local private schools
• Hispanic Heritage Month display now up in the store!

Current Book Count: ~25,000+

🐦‍🔥 Follow along as The Phoenix Used Bookshop continues to rise—subscribe to A Bookshop of My Own and get updates at phoenixusedbookshop.com.

Stef said no to the pop-up. Their businesses didn't mesh, and three months of treading water wasn't worth the distraction. She's learned this lesson before: when one opportunity falls through, a better one follows and the right second space will come.

Meanwhile, the Larkspur store is humming despite a closed restaurant and construction on the street—new customer traffic dipped, but repeat customers are solid. She's refocusing on what works: seasonal pivots (Halloween section testing well, holiday store planned for November), guerrilla marketing (postcards to local parents), and something she's been sitting on for months: online sales.

A first-edition Grapes of Wrath with dust jacket landed in her hands. The antiquarian bookstore friends told her it's listable and worth real money. That's when it clicked: she has a year's worth of boxed books—inventory as passive income if she can process it. She found a former bookstore owner (through Nextdoor) interested in listing books for a fair rate. That's revenue stream #3: brick-and-mortar, events (book clubs growing fast), and online!

She's launching Phoenix Noir (mysteries/thrillers) book club alongside expanding Phoenix En Plein Air. Details in the show notes.

Then came the moment. A customer brought in a hardcover copy of "One Morning in Maine" - her favorite childhood book, the one she read her own kids and left it for her. No sale, just a gift. That's when Stef understood why she does this 💛

Current Book Count: ~20,000+

Follow along as The Phoenix Used Bookshop continues to rise—subscribe to A Bookshop of My Own and get updates at phoenixusedbookshop.com.

• All Book Clubs
• The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer
• Phoenix Noir Book Club
• Submit a book request

Rain again = Waterproof containers and hope needed.

The book club doubled: added a 1 p.m. slot, but the 6:30 meeting is the one that's filling. September 15th, two meetings, one day, Stef is excited! Husbands and Lovers—historical novel set in 1950s Cairo and present-day New England, about sisters and family (maybe a bit more romance than some people expected?)

Stef's consolidating storage, closing the second unit (her old art studio) by October 1st. That's 50 boxes of books moving from studio to garage to house—10 boxes a week. Cutting expenses, creating space.

Today: contract negotiations on the pop-up. She asked for first right of refusal on the concept maybe a ballsy move, but definitely strategic.

But the real work is in the back end—what she calls "the book problem." In affluent areas, people buy books, support authors, support indie bookstores, then end up with too many books at home. After sorting into online, nonprofit, and in-store channels, what happens to the remnants? The school textbooks no one wants. The woodworking guides. The niche books someone spent energy writing that still hold value.

That's the business, figuring out what no one else has figured out.

On the front end, she's launching a community review system—readers writing two-sentence reviews, inserted in books before shelves. Keeping books from being treated as commodities and adding provenance bookmarks upon contribution (where did this book come from?). Building human touch into self-checkout pop-up inventory.

Current Book Count: ~20,000+

Follow along as The Phoenix Used Bookshop continues to rise—subscribe to A Bookshop of My Own and get updates at phoenixusedbookshop.com.

Links mentioned:

• Community book reviews: stef@phoenixusebookshop.com
• Phoenix En Plein Air Book Club - still room!
• Submit a book request.