“Books have a unique way of bringing people together.”

By Samantha Holzman

April 4, 2017

Attention all bookworms- downtown Ashland recently opened a used bookstore! This is an amazing opportunity to read literature without breaking the bank.

I stopped in and talked to Wes Wise and Hannah Farley about the new business!

So what is Ashland Books?

Wes: “We are a used bookstore! I would say we specialize in classics and vintage books; clean, modern books. In other words, we want stuff that’s a little bit nicer. It’s not trashed, it’s not mass-market paperbacks that have been read ten times already.”

Why did you decide to move? What’s the story there?

Wes: “Well we have an antique shop in Sullivan. From the very start, we had a room full of books. Books are sort of a natural thing that you would get at auctions. At the time we had books and records and we moved the records out so we could put more books in. And then the books started overflowing into the rest of the shop and we didn’t have as much room for antiques. Hannah’s been working for me for years and she sort of took over the books. And we decided about a year ago that we needed to open up a bookstore, so here we are!”

Why is a used bookstore beneficial to Ashland?

Wes: “The main benefit is that you can purchase books for a much lower price than traditionally. Our fiction books start at $2 and our nonfiction books starts at $3-4. In most cases, we sell them for less than 20% of the cover price. I think every city needs a used bookstore!”

Hannah: “Books have a unique way of bringing people together.”

What types of books are available?

Wes: “We have classics and literature, which are very popular with the students. We have nonfiction. We sort of specialize in history and military because up at the antique shop we found that these were our biggest sellers. But we have nice selections of just about every category. There’s an entire room dedicated to fiction and it’s growing every day. We don’t have a lot of books that are outdated. We try to be selective because books get stale after a while. The majority of our books are published after 2005. We look for clean, quality hardbacks and paperbacks.”

Why do you like working here?

Wes: “We both love books. That’s one of the reasons we ended up starting this thing was because both of us are avid readers. She’s been helping me at the auctions for a couple of years and we buy all the books that we can, just because we enjoy going through them and sorting them and reading them. 

We’re continuing to add new books every day. We have a lot of nice books but we could have a better selection. And we’re always open to suggestions from the community!”

Ashland Books officially opened on February 24th and will be open Tuesdays through Saturdays 10am-5pm. The bookstore is now located at 301 Orange Street in Ashland. Visit their Facebook page “Ashland Books” or email weswyse@yahoo.com for more information.

 

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