We may be biased, but we hope print never dies. Nothing quite beats the palpable smell of opening a new book. The tactile feeling of holding pages between the tips of your fingers. Doggy ear-ing or highlighting a favorite quote or particularly poignant paragraph. Devouring a hardbound or paperback cover-to-cover for dinner you just couldn’t bear to put down. Admit it, peering over at a stacked bookshelf of colored spines and inviting titles evokes an air of scholarly prestige that a Kindle, audiobook or social media platform simply cannot provide. So we especially love to see small businesses in the business procuring publications for pleasure succeed.

ORIGINAL BOOKSTORE1 STOREFRONT WINDOW COURTESY OF @BOOKSTORE1. SHOP ONLINE AT SARASOTABOOKS.COM.

Having opened in 2011 to bring a high-quality, independent bookstore to the Sarasota area, Bookstore1 celebrates its tenth-anniversary with an exciting move to continue providing book lovers—patrons and authors alike—an intimate, personable shopping experience. Bookstore1 will say goodbye to its downtown location at the corner of Palm Avenue and Main Street, where its window displays with the latest and greatest reads recommended by Bookstore1 employees lured passersby closer. But, it’s not a forever goodbye, it’s a come see us off State Sreet and Lemon Avenue, a few blocks over. As retailers start to fill in the open-air breezeway on the ground floor of The Mark, Bookstore1 officially opens its new doors later this month with a bit over 4,000 sq-feet—1,000 sq-feet more than its original space. “The new location will give us more space for book-club meetings, poetry readings, book signings and workshops now because we’ll have a mezzanine where groups can gather apart from the bustle of the retail store,” shares Owner Georgia Court. “Before, we had limited workshops—except for those online in recent years—because there was no good space to hold them. Now we have that space.” And more. The new location will also help assure the long-term life of the bookstore, says Court. “I had been looking for an appropriate site for a couple of years and I’m really excited to be in The Mark which, I think, is the coolest condo building in the area.”

Purchasing a space, instead of leasing, gives Court greater control in securing the existence and evolution of her prime retail space downtown dedicated to the not-so-dying art of storytelling and printed perusal.