04/12/2023
Huge news for book lovers in Columbia. At last, Columbia is getting an independent bookstore! Queen Takes Book is set to open in Snowden Center in early 2024. Shared to this post is the official announcement from their page (give it a follow!). The website (queentakesbook.com) is also now live.
The owner of the store and decade-long Columbia resident Katie McNally reached out to me to help spread the word.
Here is what I learned:
"Over the past year, my husband and I have been working toward a dream that I've held for a long time, which is to open an indie bookstore. While we have always appreciated, and taken advantage of, the B&N and BAM locations at the mall and B&N in Ellicott City, I believe that independent bookstores have a special role in a community, filling needs that can't be met by larger corporate entities. We note the unique offerings provided by Busboys & Poets, not to mention Second Edition as a source of used books, but it always surprised me that Columbia - for the time that I've lived here - has not had a true, local independent bookstore.
I am excited to reach out to you today as one of the very first steps in announcing to the community that we are changing that. We have been working quietly towards the opening of a Columbia indie bookstore, and we have recently signed a retail lease that will see us opening our doors in early 2024.
Our store is named "Queen Takes Book" and will be located at Snowden Center, adjacent to the longstanding Mother Nature's bird and nature store. Right now, another soon-to-open business in Snowden Center - Stretch Labs - is using our space to sign up members while their unit is undergoing construction. We expect to take formal possession in mid-December, at which time we will begin our own fit-out and preparations.
Our website is live at queentakesbook.com, and over the coming days and weeks we will be initiating a marketing push to build awareness of the store and its opening next spring. We had always anticipated providing you with an early heads-up of this news before we went active with a promotional push, recognizing your work in following and covering development updates across the community. It certainly helps our launch if you find this news worthy of coverage, and I trust that giving you the earliest access to this news (apart from some close friends and family, of course), is helpful to your work as well.
For those that we have told at various times in the past year, we have received a very positive reaction to the idea of a new indie bookstore in Columbia, and my hope is that you are, personally, a fan. We intend to bring the best of what indie bookstores can do for a community, making it more than just a place to purchase new books. We will strive to tap into and grow the local community of passionate readers and book clubs, create partnerships to support all efforts to build a love of reading, raise and share under-represented voices and create a space for events and important conversations.
Every day we are enhancing our website and generating ideas and plans to bring news of our store to the community. We are plugged into, and are receiving guidance from, other indie booksellers in the region, and are taking advantage of membership in the American Booksellers Association (ABA) and the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA), which is the regional trade association. We have an active online storefront on Bookshop.org, which is a growing B-Corp providing book buyers with an alternative to the major online retailers, while also supporting indie bookstores like ours.
There is, of course, more to share, and we would be delighted to provide you with as much background and detail as you would seek to know."
I also asked about the name, and here is what I learned:
"As for the name, I was drawn to the shared qualities between chess and reading - engaging, enjoyable but each activity also challenging us to think, each can be done solo but the experience is enhanced when shared with others. The queen is also my subtle nod to Columbia and the Kings Contrivance village, as the Dickinson neighborhood and village center (Amherst House) are named for Emily Dickinson. I got lucky that there is a chess piece that rhymes with book! "
