New Denver stores open, others adapt as ‘indie’ booksellers make comeback

West Side Books, a staple of Denver’s Highland neighborhood for nearly 30 years, is downsizing.

But it will remain in the same spot it has occupied since 1999. And it is open for business.

It’s a testament to the resiliency of independent booksellers that the Highland institution has remained opened, and a new independent bookstore in Uptown recently opened, in the face of pressure from national chains and buyers’ online habits. Trade organizations report rising numbers of new stores, a trend they say gained momentum as readers rallied to support local businesses when the pandemic hit in 2020.

While staying put, West Side Books & Curios has changed ownership. Matt Aragon-Shafi, the former manager, has taken over the business from Lois Harvey, who retired in February after more than 40 years as an independent bookstore owner in Denver.

Aragon-Shafi and Harvey have mixed emotions about their new roles. Aragon-Shafi said moving from an employee to owner feels good. “But it’s overwhelming in a way.”

Harvey turned in her keys to the building at 3434 W. 32nd Ave. on Feb. 3.

“There was a certain amount of relief,” Harvey said.

She oversaw the moving of roughly 40,000 books to go from a 3,000-square-foot space to the current 1,000-square-foot space at the front of the building.

“It had been so much work getting that done,” Harvey said.

But it’s sad “to see what had been built and dismantled,” she added.

West Side decided to scale back because the lease was set to significantly increase. Grant Gingerich bought the building in 2021 from Harvey’s brother, Jim Harvey. Gingerich said high commercial property taxes and increases in other business expenses necessitated raising the rent.

Gingerich said he wants to work with West Side Books to keep it in the neighborhood where he has another building up the street and has been part-owner of a local restaurant for about 18 years. He’s looking at using the space behind the bookstore for events and an adjacent vacant lot as community open space.

“My wife and I are dug in. This is our community,” Gingerich said. “There’s nothing more that I want than to have West Side Books thrive for another 25 years.”

Rising costs, the dominance of online behemoth Amazon in bookselling and disruptions during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic shook independent bookstores nationwide for years.

In Denver, a seismic event struck the bookstore scene in 2024 when the Tattered Cover, a nationally renowned independent bookseller, was sold to the Barnes & Noble chain. The 50-plus-year-old Denver store filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023.

However, Harvey, who opened her first bookstore in 1980, said the market started evolving during the pandemic when local stores, with the help of industry organizations, started or expanded online sales. She said customers stepped up to support local businesses and protests of George Floyd’s murder boosted interest in reading about politics and culture.

“The bookstores I know of are doing well. I’m just so proud of them,” Harvey said.

The state of independent bookstores in the Denver area and the region is positive, said Heather Duncan, the executive director of the  Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association. The organization has members in 14 states.

“Our membership is increasing every year fairly significantly. The (store) openings are outpacing the closings by far,” Duncan said.

The association has 82 members in Colorado. Not all independent bookstores are members. In a “good guestimate” of the regional growth of the local stores, or “indies,” Duncan said at least a third of the association’s 328 members opened in the past two years.

“I’ve been in the bookstore business for 40 years and this has been one of the biggest growth periods that I’ve seen,” Duncan said.

The American Booksellers Association, a national trade organization for indie stores, reported 3,281 member locations in 2025, up from 2,844 in 2024 and 2,209 in 2020.

Duncan agreed with Harvey that more people turned to books and wanted to stand behind local businesses when the pandemic hit. Right before COVID-19 broke out, Bookshop.org started. The platform is an online bookseller geared to independent stores and shoppers looking for an alternative to Amazon. As a certified B corporation, which meets certain social and environmental standards, it shares its profits with bookstores.

“That allowed a whole bunch of bookstores, especially small mom-and-pop stores, pop-up stores and mobile bookstores, to have this really strong web presence instantly where they could sell books online and ship them to customers,” Duncan said.

And there is “a whole bunch of young and demographically diverse people opening bookstores,” she said.

Harvey said younger people are increasingly reading physical books rather than scrolling on screens. They’re attracted to beautifully illustrated and decorated first editions and books of different genres, she said.

One bookstore maintains, one starts anew

As West Side Books maintains its foothold in the Highland neighborhood, a new independent bookstore has opened its doors in Denver’s Uptown neighborhood. The Denver Book Society officially opened Feb. 20 at 1700 Humboldt St, once the site of the well-known Strings Restaurant.

A partner in the new venture is not new to the indie scene. Kwame Spearman was CEO of the Tattered Cover when the store filed for bankruptcy. He and his current partner, Rich Garvin, made an unsuccessful bid to buy Tattered Cover out of bankruptcy.

Deciding to build an independent bookstore from scratch, Garvin bought a 9,000-square-foot building for $2.9 million. Besides the bookstore, the building houses two restaurants and has space for a third.

“I had spent all this time learning about bookstores. I thought I still really wanted to have a bookstore,” Garvin said. “I decided it would be good to have a building that you own to put your bookstore in because many bookstores fail because of the rent.”

Garvin moved from San Francisco to Denver after the pandemic started. He had retired from his business that organized conferences and managed events for large corporations. He met Spearman through a mutual friend.

While upbeat about the new bookstore, which has a children’s section and a coffee bar, Spearman acknowledged his last time in the business didn’t end well.

“I would say that my experience as CEO was probably ultimately one of the bigger failures I’ve encountered,” Spearman said. “I think over the past two years, there’s been a lot of time to reflect.”

Spearman and two other Denver natives, David Back and Alan Frosh, bought the Tattered Cover in 2020 as part of an investment team. The company struggled to compete with large retailers such as Amazon and the pandemic.

“I think that when we took on the business, it was a business that was on fumes and basically headed towards bankruptcy during a really difficult period,” Spearman said.

The owners opened new Tattered Cover stores in Westminster and Colorado Springs and completed the move of the Lower Downtown location to a new one in McGregor Square.

Spearman took a leave of absence as CEO in 2023 to run for Denver mayor and then stepped down ahead of an unsuccessful run for the Denver school board. Before then, some Tattered Cover employees made claims of bullying and ageism, allegations that Spearman denied.

Spearman, who attended Yale Law School and Harvard Business School, said he got back into the bookstore business faster than he anticipated.

“As long as I am in Denver, I am going to, in some way, shape or form, try to be involved in the local economy,” Spearman said. “I think the thing that separates really outstanding cities from OK cities is when you have a thriving local environment.”

Spearman and Garvin want to make the Denver Book Society a community gathering space. They have started board-game nights and are hosting book clubs. They’re partnering with the theater company at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts on events at the store.

Garvin’s dog, Cooper, an Australian shepherd, is a kind of mascot for the store. A “Cooperish” mug of a dog is part of the store’s logo.

“I fundamentally believe the same thing I felt with Tattered Cover, that books are this unifier,” Spearman said. “They are this opportunity to create community. And we need a third space now more than ever.”

He and Garvin are encouraged so far by the response to the new store. They sold 1,500 books and 500 cups of coffee over their opening weekend.

Aragon-Shafi at West Side Books said the community has supported the business as it makes the transition in ownership. People volunteered advice and spaces to store items and books. They helped with such tasks as alphabetizing books.

Although the store has culled most of its used books, Aragon-Shafi plans to still sell some of the used and rare inventory that West Side was first known for. He said his opportunity to run a business is part of a family tradition.

“My dad owned a convenience store for a long time. My grandpa owned an import store when he came here from India,” he said.

Aragon-Shafi also feels he is entrusted with keeping the beloved community bookstore going. He was a regular at West Side since attending nearby North High School.

“I see other bookstores that have been here for years and years, and I want us to be here for years and years.”

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