Laurie’s Books is a local bookstore that exists to support the wellbeing of its community through buying and selling print media, providing excellent customer service, hosting local events, and being a good neighbor and destination for the community.
Laurie’s Books began as Laurie’s Paperback Exchange in 1982. The most recent new owners, Rekha and Louis Burns, took over the store in August 2022. Rekha comes to the store with 15 years of prior bookstore management experience.
The business model to that point had been to trade or exchange mass marketing paperbacks for half their resale value which was half their listed price. That often works out to $1-2. And then grant that as store credit of which half could be used in future transactions. As you can imagine, it’s hard to keep the lights on and pay employees like that.
That business model doesn’t work for bringing in merchandise more valuable than the existing used mass marketing paperback books with so much existing store credit. Therefore, to keep the store open, and running, and become profitable, Rekha and Louis decided to phase out the existing store credit system to make way for new and newer books.
To improve the store as a community destination, they welcome local authors and artists to come to showcase their work at weekend events.
