Heather Halak has been working at Third House Books on 400 NW 10 th Ave. for six years. While Halak hasn’t been worried about chain bookstores bringing competition to the Gainesville area, the upcoming opening of a new Barnes & Noble location in Butler Plaza has caught her attention.
“With a Barnes & Noble, it is a little more concerning for me because they also do community events. They do have writers come,” Halak said. “They don’t really partner with local businesses or local organizations, which I do all the time. But I am a little concerned to have two big-box stores now in one town.”
Halak says she strives to build personal relationships with the people who come into the store.
“Customer service, you know, big-box stores can’t offer that. And also big-box stores can’t offer tailored book recommendations,” Halak said. “I often remember what my customers read, like, individually. I know one customer likes to read crime novels, and I know another customer likes to read science fiction published by Tor.”
Halak said she started out working alongside the original owner of the store but eventually moved up. She took over ownership of the independent bookstore from the original founder and friend, Kiren Valjee, who opened the store in October 2016. Since then, she has been running the business alone, selling books to loyal customers and scrubbing toilets in the back.
“Unfortunately, running a bookstore is not lucrative with how profit margins work with publishers. So those profit margins need to cover our rent, utilities, stock more inventory — there are so many things that the margin covers,” Halak said. “It is hard to have employees without taking out a ton of loans. Yeah, it’s just tough.”
When Halak took on the business in 2018, she said she continued the original vision for what kind of products the store would sell.
“We specialize in small presses, titles by marginalized voices, things that you basically wouldn’t find in a big-box store,” Halak said.
She considers this to be an advantage over chain bookstores, especially competing ones in Gainesville like Books-A-Million that don’t carry the same genres she specializes in. Halak says her strategy has been to promote sales for books that focus on local topics and interests. So far, she said the strategy has worked.
“Trying to emulate what big-box stores are doing would be hurting myself, it would be like shooting myself in the foot because people go to indie bookstores for different reasons,” Halak said.
One of those reasons is its location, which is not practical for everyone.
“The issue with this bookstore is that it’s so far away,” said Clara Cajade, a student at the University of Florida, about Third House Books. “Unless I have someone with a car willing to take me, I’m not going. I’m not paying a $20 Uber to get to a bookstore. That’s the price of a book,” Cajade said. “So if Barnes & Noble is closer to the university, like a walkable distance, then I’m going to be going there. I love the atmosphere, I love the smell of books, and I’ll take it any way I can get it. If it’s an independent bookstore, yeah that’s preferable, but I’m not going to not get the experience.”
Olivia Daniel, another student at the University of Florida, said there’s a problem with the local bookstore options in general.
“Honestly, as a college student, I don’t have a lot of money to work with, so I probably will go towards Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble and those larger bookstores. But there’s also not a lot of bookstores in Gainesville for me to even use as options.”
She said even Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million don’t offer a lot of book recommendations either.
“They haven’t read all of them, they really can’t tell you that much about them other than where you can find them in the store based on some computer that they go on,” Daniel said.
Halek said it makes her sad, but she knows that she can’t meet the needs of everyone looking for a book.
“It’s hard to go into personal debt to try and keep a business alive, especially since I’m only 29 — I turn 30 in a few weeks — and I’ve been doing this since I was 24,” Halak said. “It’s been a huge chapter for growth and learning, but I’m tired.”
Once her commercial lease ends in 2025, Halak said she plans on closing the bookstore for good.
She said that she’s excited about the next chapter, getting to focus on herself and rediscovering her love for reading.
