Did You Know There’s an Independent Bookstore Revival Underway?
May 5, 2026
Americans are fighting against big tech.
Late last month, American booksellers reached an important milestone. In the United States, 2,000 bookstores celebrated Independent Bookstore Day, breaking participation records.
In a country with around 45,000 supermarkets and 400,000 independent restaurants, this may seem like a laudable but relatively modest achievement. But in fact, it’s a remarkable feat for retailers once considered an endangered species, doomed in the face of Amazon’s e-book and two-day shipping empire.
Despite all the efforts of the online commerce giant, the ranks of American independent bookstores have grown by 70% since 2020. The sector’s professional group, the American Booksellers Association, now has 3,200 members. As a handful of Silicon Valley titans power an ever-larger share of our economy, this surprising turnaround for once-imperiled booksellers isn’t just unexpected good news: It’s proof that Americans have both the desire and the ability to resist big tech.
In 1995, the ABA had a banner year, eclipsing the current bookstore boom: 5,500 stores with 7,000 locations nationwide. It was a short-lived high, however. That same year, Amazon expanded its efforts as an online bookstore, operating at a loss and undercutting traditional retailers’ prices. Jeff Bezos hand-delivered his millionth order, a biography of Princess Diana and a guide to using Microsoft Windows, to a customer in Japan two years later. (If he had really committed to the publicity stunt, he would have made the trip without allowing himself a bathroom break.)
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By the year 2000, the number of independent bookstores had fallen by 3%, and that was before Amazon launched its Kindle, which in its early years threatened to kill the printed page altogether. ABA membership hit an all-time low in 2009. Once-dominant corporate booksellers have also faltered, with Borders declaring bankruptcy in 2011 and Barnes & Noble announcing plans to close a third of its stores.
As its growing popularity strangled brick-and-mortar booksellers, Amazon was ruthless in its dealings with the book industry, extorting steep fees and discounts from publishers, and making it difficult for customers to buy releases from presses that were reckless in fighting back. In 2017, the company followed insult upon injury with what seemed like one final indignity: a fleet of its own hideous bookstores, filled with airport titles and branded gadgets.
So how have small bookstores made a comeback? Well, it seems that many people simply prefer not to limit their reading to the digital world, nor their shopping at exploitative, anti-union warehouses. A third of Americans now view Big Tech as the greatest threat to the nation’s future, suggesting that years of exhortations to “shop small” have likely found a receptive audience.
There’s also the singular experience of patronizing a local bookstore, where clerks are on hand to offer expert advice, locally relevant selections take pride of place on entryway tables, and where shoppers can meet friends, neighbors, and their next favorite reads. When browsing a physical store, readers are three times more likely to come across a new book that interests them than when browsing Amazon’s interface.
Today, Barnes & Noble, once the chief nemesis of small booksellers, is more like the David to Amazon’s Goliath — and is expected to open 60 new stores this year. New independent bookstores are proliferating, with 422 opening in 2025 alone. The independent bookstore landscape now has stores in every corner of the country and includes stores owned by renowned authors like Ann Patchett, Louise Erdrich, and Judy Blume. Amazon, meanwhile, abandoned its own experiment with storefront book sales in 2022.
By supporting local retailers, bookworms are voting with their feet. They’re not alone: After decades of what seemed like a centuries-old trend toward digital over analog, there are signs that a collective screen fatigue has set in among Americans, translating into a growing preference for in-person, community-based experiences and local commerce. Live concerts break sales records. MLB games attract more fans each year, and ticket sales for the NHL, which still ranks fourth, are also on the rise, although debate over why is heated.
Physical media is seeing a similar rise, with 57 million more printed books sold in 2025 than in 2019. Blu-Rays and DVDs are a hit with streaming-weary Generation Z, while vinyl sales have surpassed $1 billion in the United States for the first time in more than 40 years.
Bookstores, for their part, host popular literary events, community service efforts and even concerts. Open Books of Chicago has donated more than a million volumes to students and operates a mobile store that brings books to underserved neighborhoods. In North Carolina, Asheville’s Firestorm Books hosts gatherings ranging from local litter patrols to an animal rights book group.
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The Metaverse may be on life support, but in meatspace, people are taking advantage of opportunities to interact with real objects and gather with real people in real places. In doing so, they reject the technology platforms that too often push us into isolation and condescension from a handful of monopolies.
“The success of independent bookstores is proof that Americans don’t want to sit at home waiting for delivery robots to arrive at our doors. Instead, almost everyone prefers to be part of healthy, locally-rooted communities with thriving small businesses. As one bookseller, who left the tech industry to open Storyline Bookshop in Upper Arlington, Ohio, said, “it was never just about the books we read. It’s also about the new stories we create with people we might never have met otherwise.
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