A 'COMMUNITY GATHERING PLACE'
STARTING A BOOKSTORE IN THE MIDDLE OF A PANDEMIC, EMILY LINER - THE OWNER OF FRIENDLY CITY BOOKS - IS BUILDING HER BUSINESS MODEL ON LISTENING TO HER DIVERSE CUSTOMER BASE
Emily Liner was taking a photo of her staff outside the Friendly City Books storefront on Fifth Street in Columbus, when a woman driving by yelled out her lowered vehicle window, “Hey! Do you have ‘Just As I Am’?”
Sure enough, the store had it in stock. That’s the most recent drive-by customer Liner’s store has served since opening in November, but it wasn’t the first.
“We literally have word-of-mouth advertising,” Liner laughed. “I’ve met so many new people through this book store and through sharing the love of reading.”
Friendly City Books is open from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, with between 100 and 150 customers filtering through each week. Some, Liner said, come in and spend $100. Others, whom Liner calls her “regulars”, may come in once a week and only buy a book or two each visit.
Christine Palmer is in the latter group. The mother of two takes her daughters in turn for a “Wednesday treat” each week, starting with a trip to Coffee House on 5th then walking across the street to the bookstore.
“There is so much value to having a book of your own,” Christine said. “I feel like my children read so much more when they own the books.”
Liner sells new and used, hardback and paperback, with price-points ranging from the predictably expensive to as little as $1 for some children’s books. Customers can also trade in up to three used books per visit for in-store credit.
“We’re trying to learn and be responsive to what the community likes,” Liner said.
Liner’s quiet, independent bookstore nestled in the Deep South is a long way from the Washington, D.C. beltway where she’s spent most of the last 15 years, but it’s exactly where she wants to be.
The Bay St. Louis native moved to Columbus in 2002 to attend the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science. She graduated from Georgetown in 2008 and joined a political consulting firm. She later earned a business degree from The University of North Carolina and joined a “think tank” in D.C. focused on economic policy issues. While there researching entrepreneurship, specifically access to capital for startups, she kept seeing that Mississippi ranked at or near the bottom in the U.S. in those categories.
“I became frustrated looking at the statistics and why that was happening,” she said.
Soon she “started feeling the call to come back” to her home state. She taught three summers at Mississippi Governor’s School at the Mississippi University for Women. By the third summer, 2019, she was house hunting.
“There’s a lot of discussion about brain drain in Mississippi, and I was part of that,” Liner said. “It seemed like the best solution to help reverse it was to move back.”
The timing of opening a bookstore in 2020 was, to say the least, interesting. Other independent bookstores had tried and failed in Columbus. Books-A-Million, the only big-box bookstore in the city, had just shuttered at Leigh Mall. There was also the global COVID-19 pandemic.
“I felt like this was either the best idea I could have or the worst,” Liner said. “It’s really hard to formulate expectations in the middle of a pandemic. […] I tried to make the best projections I could. I’m really happy with how it’s going.”
She started the store online on August 29 - Independent Bookstore Day - building her brand and some capital while trying to nail down a physical location. On November 28, she opened her shop in the former Mary Kay building.
After the pandemic passes, Liner is sure tourists will come and her bookstore will benefit from their dollars. Even so, local customers have gotten Friendly City Books off the ground, and Liner said they will always be integral to her store’s survival.
When a customer requests a book, Liner tries to get it. She responds to trends she sees in those requests, too, most recently starting to expand her religious section because of high demand.
“I want this to be a gathering place for the community, and I want our customers to feel like they have a say,” she said.
Liner also is trying to form a Community Reader Council made up of customers and local leaders as a sort of advisory panel for the store. She’s looking for representation from the Air Force Base and Mississippi University for Women, as well as the faith, minority and LGBTQ community so the councill will reflect “the diversity of Columbus.” Part of this effort includes forming a special youth council, as well.
“If I’m here in 40 years, then I’ve done something right,” Liner said. “But to do that, we’ll have to be nimble, innovate and listen to what the community wants.”
STORY BY ZACK PLAIR
PHOTOS BY LEDRICO ISAAC
