Sep 2, 2026 · 27 min · 11 segments
In Episode 17 of The Northern OBX Podcast, we step inside The Island Bookstore, a beloved independent bookstore tucked into Historic Corolla Village. Part of the Outer Banks community for decades, the…
Miles DanielsHost
independent bookstores you mentioned the 90s when you had the big box and then i think it was fast forward to i think around 2007 amazon introduces a kindle and i remember i was living in new york and then san francisco strand books i mean that's that was keeping independent bookstore owners up at night
what is it about independent bookstores and you know, unlike the CD or the DVD, the books didn't fall by the wayside.
I think the physical act of reading a book is something that is different than reading in any other way.
You know, when you scroll on your screen, even when you're reading on a Kindle, which looks like a book and you're kind of turning a page, it's just not the same as the feel, the smell, the joy you get in coming in a place like this and going... oh there's so many choices you know just the whole act of buying acquiring and and having books is something that can't be reproduced electronically and there was a lot of panic and there were a lot of stores that went under um but like with a lot of things it's not either or it's yes and there are plenty of people that only read on a kindle now and that's fine there are a lot of people like me that when i'm traveling I'm on a plane.
Podcasts are great, but sometimes you need something with a longer attention span.
You know what I mean? So it took a while to shake out and there was a lot of fear.
But then I will say the pandemic, when I was taking over the stores at that time, there was a real resurgence in reading because people had more time.
We had the social distance, but you could go out and go to a bookstore, right, with 10 other people at a time.
And so I think that, and people blogged about it and talked about it and book talk, you know, on TikTok and all kinds of book threads on social media really got people reading again and loving it, not just doing it because they had to.
independent bookstores you mentioned the 90s when you had the big box and then i think it was fast forward to i think around 2007 amazon introduces a kindle and i remember i was living in new york and then san francisco strand books i mean that's that was keeping independent bookstore owners up at night
what is it about independent bookstores and you know, unlike the CD or the DVD, the books didn't fall by the wayside.
I think the physical act of reading a book is something that is different than reading in any other way.
You know, when you scroll on your screen, even when you're reading on a Kindle, which looks like a book and you're kind of turning a page, it's just not the same as the feel, the smell, the joy you get in coming in a place like this and going... oh there's so many choices you know just the whole act of buying acquiring and and having books is something that can't be reproduced electronically and there was a lot of panic and there were a lot of stores that went under um but like with a lot of things it's not either or it's yes and there are plenty of people that only read on a kindle now and that's fine there are a lot of people like me that when i'm traveling I'm on a plane.
Podcasts are great, but sometimes you need something with a longer attention span.
You know what I mean? So it took a while to shake out and there was a lot of fear.
But then I will say the pandemic, when I was taking over the stores at that time, there was a real resurgence in reading because people had more time.
We had the social distance, but you could go out and go to a bookstore, right, with 10 other people at a time.
And so I think that, and people blogged about it and talked about it and book talk, you know, on TikTok and all kinds of book threads on social media really got people reading again and loving it, not just doing it because they had to.
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