Siren and the Sea is expected to open this month. (Photo by Riley Ferriss)
Jess Gale is keen on keeping the cost of drip coffee low and the selection of books diverse. Gale is the owner of The Siren and the Sea, a bookstore and coffee shop hybrid in the South Wedge, set to open in October.
Gale views the combination as not just a personal choice, but a business decision—a desire to make her business more recession-proof.
“People were pretty supportive initially of indie bookstores,” she says. “But I saw the profit margin of books, which is less than normal retail. And I love craft coffee.”
So, what was previously John’s Tex Mex restaurant now accommodates two floors filled with books and desks overlooking an outdoor seating area. Where alcoholic drinks were once served, lattes and Americanos will be prepped in front of a hand-painted mural of a siren.
Gale curated the menu around the culinary aspects of coffee, focusing on creating flavor profiles with an artisanal approach that took into account the details of the brewing process and included drinks enjoyed by younger consumers, such as those topped with syrups and flavored foams.
“All the fancy drinks plus a basic drip coffee,” says Gale, adding, “I’m getting excited about introducing different drinks from different cultures, trying to broaden people’s palates.”
The Siren and the Sea is illustrative of other independent bookstores that are enjoying a resurgence in Rochester. Some, like Gale’s shop, combine coffee and books, while others have homed in on a genre. Still others combine events with books. Since 2020, at least seven bookstores have opened in Greater Rochester, including Bookeater (a cafe hybrid), Akimbo Books (focused on social justice and activism), Archivist Books (targeting LGBT and diverse audiences), and Burn Bright Bookstore (specializing in romance), each becoming increasingly niche.
The suburbs have also seen new stores pop up over the last few years, including New York City’s Book Culture in Pittsford, Bleak House Books in Honeoye Falls, and, more recently, a sign for a bookstore went up near Chen’s Garden restaurant in Brighton.
A national pattern
This bookstore renaissance isn’t unique to Rochester, but follows a larger pattern nationwide after the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the American Booksellers Association’s annual report, 323 bookstores opened last year—up 31 percent compared with the year before—including 247 storefronts, 55 pop-ups, and nine that are exclusively online, similar to how some bookstores in the area, like Akimbo and Burn Bright Books, got their start. That number is expected to grow. ABA predicts 247 indie bookstores will open in 2025.
This marks the fourth consecutive year with more than 200 new store openings, notes Allison Hill, ABA CEO.
“But the numbers only tell part of the story,” she writes in the report. “This momentum occurred despite significant challenges: the usual ones like thin margins, rising costs, and Amazon’s chokehold on our industry, and urgent threats that shook the very foundation of our work as the right to read and access books faced sustained, coordinated attacks.”
When Gale returned to Rochester in 2023 and began planning her next steps, some of the newer bookstores weren’t around yet. She finds her space in the South Wedge ideal—it is an area where college students live, and Gale envisioned the bookstore as a place where people could read, chat, or simply study.
“Even though it is very close to those other bookstores,” she says, “I’m hoping that we’ll kind of attract the same people and maybe increase foot traffic for all of us because we’re a little book center.”
Ren Parks and Jess Gale at the Siren and the Sea (Photo by Emmely Eli Texcucano)
Finding a niche
The Siren and the Sea will focus on a general-interest catalog with its own unique spin, prioritizing progressive nonfiction literature. A recent graduate in library science, Ren Parks is the main face behind the book selection and moved to Rochester to work at The Siren and the Sea with Gale.
“(We want) books that are representative of all experiences,” Parks says. “Anybody looking to see themselves represented could go and find themselves on that bookshelf.
“A huge part that I’m proud of right now is our YA collection,” she adds. “I’m doing an audit to make sure that we have as many global voices as possible, as many perspectives as possible.”
After having spent a decade in Rochester, in part studying at the University of Rochester, Parks is hoping to tap into that market, especially with the wave of students and professionals moving to the area.
“I find that the book-selling industry, more so than other industries, is more collaborative and less competitive, which is another reason I really like it,” says Gale. “Everyone has their own niche.
“Especially during our current times, places that … all people of all different races, genders, identities can go and chill out and feel safe, community spaces, are really important.”
Down the road from The Siren and the Sea is Hipocampo Children’s Bookstore. The shop originally opened its doors in 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic and the emergence of a new wave of bookstores. It offers mainly children’s literature.
Co-owners Henry Padrón-Morales and Pamela Bailie’s mission was always the same: to reflect children’s languages and cultures of the region and create a space where people can see themselves in books, while also exploring new things and new people.
Padron-Morales, who was a recently retired kindergarten dual language teacher at the time, was surrounded by children’s books for 35 years, working up the street at School 12, where he originally met Bailie, the mother of two of his former students.
“I actually had a little fake bookstore as a little kid. … The fact that when Henry and I were talking about sort of dreams, that’s where we realized that both of us had the same dream,” Bailie says.
Hipocampo Children’s Bookstore is down the street from the Siren and the Sea. (Photo hipocampochildrensbooks.com)
Brought together again by chance, they decided opening a store on South Clinton made sense. Then, shortly after Hipocampo’s opening, COVID hit. Padron-Morales didn’t expect the business to survive the pandemic lockdown.
“We had opened right before it, and honestly, when all the stores were asked to close, we said to ourselves, ‘We’re done. There’s no way this is going to work.’ But then, immediately, people started buying books off our website. I think maybe one person had bought a book on it before that,” he says. “Once the pandemic happened, we just started getting all these orders. I think with the pandemic, what it showed was how much the community itself really wanted a bookstore.”
Bailie recalls dropping off orders during that time.
“It was like the old mail or milkman deliveries, but it was us. It was like the community saying, ‘We want you to be here. We want you to stay,’” she says. “For us, that was a really important part, and it made us feel like … people saw the value in what we were trying to do.”
Online sales are still important.
“I think you have to have a good mix of people walking in and online sales in this day and age, because people do want stuff now,” says Padron-Morales. “That online validation is necessary.
“Online is, for me, a volume- and money-driven platform,” he adds. “We do not create the illusion that we can compete with any of the big boxes or the alphabet soup places. We’re a smaller operation, so online for us (is) numerically a game that we can’t even entertain, but it is important. It is something that keeps us at a steady flow.”
Hipocampo’s owners are optimistic about the outlook for independent booksellers in the Rochester region.
“My hope is that the growth of bookstores in our area means that more people will be comfortable going out to bookstores and go check them out and see all of the different things that different bookstores have to offer,” says Padron-Morales. “Now it just seems to be growing, this desire. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but my hope is that it’s going to drive more people to go to bookstores and enjoy them as sort of that third space that people talk about.”
Gale operated a store in Illinois during the COVID-19 pandemic, which influenced her decision to open shop on South Clinton.
“It was a totally different business,” says Gale, who cut down on staffing and pivoted to different delivery methods that continued even after COVID, whether it was pick-up, in-person deliveries, or mailing services, similar to what Hipocampo did in Rochester.
“It weirdly helped the community see that we were able to work with them,” says Gale of her experience.
As shoppers stayed at home, online marketing became a vital strategy for independent bookstores.
“People develop a sense of community and your presence through social media,” Gale says.
As shop owners trained themselves to pick up a new medium for survival, so did online shoppers.
“I think people really have to train themselves not to go onto Amazon,” Gale observes. “But when they do, it works.”
For Rachel Crawford, pop-ups and the online presence she built during the pandemic are what catapulted her into opening Akimbo Bookstore, her first brick-and-mortar store, in 2022. It specializes in independent presses and social justice.
Before the pandemic, she had started a bookstore in the Finger Lakes for a nonprofit, and around the time that COVID hit, she was let go. She had learned how to do it all herself, and as places shut down, she began operating her own online store.
“I made it personalized and asked people random questions that would help me pick out a book for them if they wanted a surprise book from me. And so that was really exciting,” recalls Crawford.
Rachel Crawford is the owner of Akimbo Bookstore, which specializes in independent presses and social justice. (Photo by Emmely Eli Texcucano)
As restrictions were lifted, she began making a name for herself as a pop-up seller before opening her store.
“It was pretty clear to me at the time that people were in need of a community space. That was what the bookstore really functioned as in 2022,” says Crawford.
“It was a place for mutual aid. It was a place for political gatherings,” she adds. “It was a place to educate and learn about myriad topics, whether it was environmentalism or, you know, an underrepresented group of people or something that you could focus your efforts on locally in town to create a better community.”
That need has since changed.
“If I did not own a bookstore right now, and you asked me a year and a half ago, instead of three years ago, would you start? I would say no,” Crawford says. “That would make no sense to me right now, because that need is being met in a lot of different ways.”
After a devastating fire in 2023, Crawford was forced to relocate to the Neighborhood of the Arts, which was made possible only through direct support.
“The only reason that this is still standing is because of the community,” Crawford says. “The community has been honestly so amazing to me as not just a business owner or a literary person, but as a single mom, as a neighbor. Community is everything.”
Bookstores in Rochester each have their own niche, she observes.
“None of us are big enough to sell everything,” Crawford says. “It’s just smart and it’s helpful to be able to pass customers on to someone else.”
More than books
To stand out, smaller bookstores cater to different audiences. Alongside traditional events, such as book signings and book clubs, bookstores have introduced events centered on creating community.
“Almost all the bookstores here have some kind of strong community, giving back to the community, mutual aid work that goes on,” Bailie says.
The Siren and the Sea plans to incorporate arts-related events with both Parks and Gale having an interest in exhibiting local talent and personal connection with friends in the community.
“I think that’s a great way of just getting people in the door and expanding that community,” Gale says.
For Bookeater, a general interest bookstore and cafe in the South Wedge, a larger space allowed the business to venture into events that drew a different audience. Owner Chad Ellis bought the building in 2023.
“When we first kind of came up with the idea and started the process, there really weren’t that many that were open,” says Ellis. “I felt like there was an opening or a need in the market for a general interest (bookstore).”
Bookeater has ventured into facilitating frequent music events and social gatherings, such as singles nights and friend-making events. Ellis credits his wife, Lindsay, who recognizes a desire among people for community spaces and ways to meet someone without alcohol, a trend that is apparent on platforms like Reddit and Facebook.
“Bookstores have always been community meeting places,” Ellis notes. “Look at City Lights in San Francisco in the ’50s, it was sort of a home of the beat generation, where they would go and do their poetry.
“It is tough to support yourself with just a bookstore unless you’re a Barnes & Noble and can stock $5 million worth of books and cover every general interest,” he adds. “I think that is part of it for everybody. I think it’s to kind of support the book business and support your own business to make some additional revenue, sort of keep everything afloat.”
“We had the brewery hub 10 years ago, and now we kind of have a bookstore boom,” says Chad Ellis, owner of BookEater. (Photo by Emmely Eli Texcucano)
BookEater has introduced a variety of events, from matchmaking to yoga nights to day-long music festivals like South by Southwedge. Similarly, Burn Bright Books, another bookstore that started as a pop-up, hosts its own specialized events including yoga nights, tarot card readings, flash tattoo pop-ups, and collaborations with local food vendors like Mercury Coffee Co. One of the store’s most frequent events is book signings highlighting local writers, including self-published authors whose books the owner, Shauna Cox, carries in her store.
“You either go into a smaller space with a really tight focus on what you’re going to sell, like Archivist, or if you have a bigger space, you almost need a second revenue stream, coffee or food,” Ellis says. “As far as marketing goes, I think the amount of stores has made it easier. We all work together and repost each other’s stuff online.”
In August, the Unreliable Narrator, a queer-owned bookstore that opened in 2018 as a children’s bookstore before transitioning to a general-interest store, organized the ROC Book Crawl. The crawl was created to celebrate independent bookstores around Monroe County and promote awareness. It featured 22 stores, including a pop-up and online stand like My Bookery ROC and soon-to-open stores like Gale’s The Siren and the Sea.
“We had the brewery hub 10 years ago, and now we kind of have a bookstore boom,” says Ellis.
Gale would like to contribute to that community and create a space where people can stay for a while.
“It shouldn’t be a competition; it should be a revitalization of an area,” she says. “I’m excited to do that through art and events, making sure people feel seen in our collection, and making sure that if they don’t feel seen, we can direct them to somewhere that can help with that. The book-selling community in general is pretty darn supportive.”
Emmely Eli Texcucano is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and member of the Oasis Project’s second cohort.
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