Sayville's new Tiny Raccoon Books storefront reflects national trend of thriving independent bookstores

Bibliophile Daniel McGowan had a stock of books he didn't know what to do with after volunteering with a program that sends books to prisoners across the country.

So when his wife suggested he open his own used bookstore, it made sense. 

“I think it was something that just existed in my own consciousness for a while,” said McGowan, who has friends who own used bookstores in Brooklyn, Queens, upstate and in Spain. “I told myself … maybe I could have done that when I was younger. And then my wife [said], you can do that now … And it became real.”

McGowan, 49, who is from Rockaway Beach, opened Tiny Raccoon Books in downtown Sayville in April with over 3,000 books, mostly secondhand. He carries most genres, with a section devoted to books about Long Island and written by local authors. He also likes to sell “weird and hard to get stuff,” such as vintage James Bond novels. The store's opening reflects a national trend of thriving indie bookstores.

McGowan said he believes predictions about a cultural shift that emerged around 2010 warning about the end of book reading "was kind of premature."

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of book stores in the United States dropped from 12,151 in 1998 to 6,045 in 2019. The Borders book chain declared bankruptcy in 2011, after sluggish efforts to adapt to a changing industry. At the time, the retail chain had seven locations on Long Island.

Another retail book chain, Barnes & Noble, has eight locations on Long Island with another coming to Bridgehampton in October.

The most recent annual industry report from the American Booksellers Association says that contrary to the “pervasive rumor that independent bookstores are closing in great numbers,” 254 new businesses opened in 2022 compared with 53 that shut down across the United States.

Long Island has more than a dozen independent bookstores.

Two that opened in 2022 are A Book Place in Riverhead and The Next Chapter in Huntington, which opened after the closure of the popular Book Revue in Huntington. 

“Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble — they're all competing for the same consumer segment, which is people who probably just want to get books cheaply,” said Stacey Finkelstein, a Stony Brook University marketing professor.

But at a small independent bookstore, the “service is much more customized,” she said. “The level of customer service is less transactional and more [about] relationship building,” through services like community events, book clubs and books focused on local interests or from local authors and artists.

Schoolteacher Donna Verbeck, 58, of Sayville, said she visits Tiny Raccoon Books with her husband probably once a week and McGowan knows them by name.

She likes that the store sells used books, which means they’re cheaper, but it also means that she can find books beyond those “mass-marketed" at the time she's shopping.

“If you go into an independent small bookstore, you have people who are in there who love reading and want to share books that they know, and will tell you about books that they know and that they like. That's great,” Verbeck said.

By Brianne Ledda

brianne.ledda@newsday.com@brianne_ledda

Brianne Ledda covers the Town of Islip for Newsday. She previously covered Southold and Greenport for The Suffolk Times and is a graduate of Stony Brook University.