FOLEY — In the era of increasing popularity of e-books and chain bookstores, Reide Irwin aims to uphold the tradition of physical print editions.

With an official opening in October, Irwin brought Dorothy June Booksellers to 107 W. Orange Ave. in Foley.

"I have grown up with a love for reading, and every one of my family loves to read, so it has just kind of always been part of my life," Irwin said. "I have always wanted to have a small business in Foley, and I have always wanted to share my love for reading with the community."

When deciding on a business name, Irwin knew she wanted to make the name special to not only her, but her family.

"Dorothy and June are family names of women who loved to read in my family," she said. "We came up with the name of the bookstore to recognize those women while also celebrating several decades of a love for reading."

Having grown up in Foley, Irwin wanted a bookstore that would cater to people of all ages with different genre preferences.

"It was a process of wanting to make sure there was something for everyone," she said. "I asked a lot of people in the community of all varying ages and groups what their interests were in reading because everyone likes to read something different. We just wanted to make sure we had a good balance of fiction, nonfiction and everything in between."

With chain stores such as Barnes & Noble adding 30 new stores in 2023 alone, and Amazon shipping books nationwide, local bookstores like Dorothy June Booksellers are looking to gain customers and aim for locals in the area to contribute to their small business.

According to Wordsrated, Amazon curates around $28 billion worldwide from book sales each year and sells at least 300 million print books every year.
Bookstat, a service that collects online sales in real time from Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble across the print book, e-book and audiobook formats, found that the most popular format in terms of units (unit sales are the number of items that a brand has sold rather than the dollar amount) in 2022 was e-books with unit sales of 526 million. Unit sales of audiobooks increased to 188 million units, and print units fell to 403 million.

"I have always been the kind of person who just likes to have the book physically in my hand," Irwin said. "I like to hold the book that I am reading. I know with current progress, people love Kindles, and they love their notes, but I just don't want to see that (print copies) go away. Our goal is to keep the importance of reading real, tangible books alive however we can."

Irwin added that she is always supporting her local library and visiting other local bookstores when traveling to a new city.

"I think that small local shops have something unique to offer because they are exactly that: local," she said. "One of my family's favorite activities is finding the local bookshop when we visit a new place, so we hope to be that for the community of Foley. The unique thing about local bookstores is that they are able to curate a display of books that is specialized to just that store. We have different products to offer than a typical larger chain, and we can also order books for customers per their request. In fact, we've already begun doing so."