The gold at the end of the rainbow: Liberty Bay Books!
Pacific Northwest Bookselles Association’s Tiffany LaSalle of Eugene, OR is touring Washington, visiting PNBA member indie bookstores and talking to booksellers. Her first stop:
Liberty Bay Books, Poulsbo, WA.
Suzanne Selfors
Liberty Bay Books is “North Kitsap’s Oldest Book Store.” In February 2020, author Suzanne Selfors purchased the store. Tiffany got to spend time with Suzanne and her son (and bookstore co-owner and co-author), Walker Ranson, in the shop during the heat wave.
Tiffany LaSalle: Anything you would like to say to the Booksellers of the PNW?
Suzanne Selfors: We hope that our air conditioning starts working!
Walker Ranson
Customer (encouragingly): You are the third store whose AC has gone out on this street, it’s crazy!
30 seconds later, the AC kicks in, as if on cue.
TL: It LIVES!
Suzanne was just talking about closing the store early due to the 90 degree weather and the AC overloading the circuit. This, while not ideal, would be a mixed blessing for her and co-owner, Walker, as they have 40 boxes of receiving to get through today. Suzanne handles customers while she makes pleasant conversation with me while she can—she is handling everything with the grace of a good bookseller, while her son, Waker, focuses on processing the bulk of receiving—they are quite the co-owner team! By his calculations, it will take at least 4 hours, if they close the store this afternoon.
Walker: We could just scan a bar code and everything would be added to the system automatically. But, that causes errors. And errors cause bigger problems later.
Walker and Tiffany in the store, July 2024
It’s a hard decision, they’ve got to keep that door open on hot days to attract foot traffic, or else people walk on by, but the unit can only handle so much! But it looks like, as long as the AC will hold on, so will Liberty Bay Books.
Suzanne would like to unofficially mention that they are working on a new event in town: The Poulsbo Kids’ Book Festival, featuring 30 authors, November 16th. Suzanne was inspired by Dan Ullom at Brick and Mortar Books in Redmond, WA and the Bigfoot Kids’ Book Festival.
SS: He’s been kind of mentoring me through the process… I’ve wanted to do this event even before the bookstore. When the owner retired, then I bought it, and a month later and Covid hit…Recently I realized, what am I waiting for?
TL: Yes, Covid put a lot of things off, but now, now is the time! Carpe Diem!
SS: Yes, because you never know what is going to happen! This will be our trial year and we’ll see how it goes.
I promised we’d get the word out. Their festival website is up now. Thank you Suzanne and Walker (and the AC unit) for working hard to beat the heat this summer and giving us something to look forward to in the cooler months to come!
Liberty Bay features many books by PNW authors, including this case of kids’ books by Suzanne herself. Suzanne can personalize books for fans. (photo by Tiffany LaSalle)
