It’s been about a year since James Webster and Josie Smith-Webster began writing the first chapter of Fort Worth’s Recluse Books, an independent bookstore at 465 S. Main St. in the burgeoning South Main neighborhood.
They are now gearing up to celebrate both their store’s first anniversary as well as National Independent Bookstore Day on April 25 with a Fort Worth bookstore crawl.
There are a few more bookstores to crawl to this year, thanks to an uptick in the retail category that had been trending downward after a battering by online sellers like Amazon, plus the pandemic and low profit margins.
The comeback of bookstores is one of the more surprising retail stories in recent years, said Rob Franks, real estate firm JLL’s managing director.
“Since 2020, the number of independent bookstores across the nation has grown by 70%, and Texas is a central player in that trend,” he said.
That’s a big shift from earlier in this century. Between 1998 and 2020, more than half of the independent bookstores in the United States went out of business, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns.
For the two owners of Recluse Books, their business is literally a labor of love, meaning not just their love for each other, but also of bookstores in general. They met working at Book Culture, an independent bookstore in the publishing capital of the U.S., New York City. They moved to Fort Worth working remotely for a publishing company before they opened this new chapter in their lives.
“We were living on Rosedale and watching the construction of this building happen and we just thought, ‘This would be the perfect place for a bookstore, we should figure out how to make it happen,’” said James Webster. “And so we did.”
The small-ish (13,000 square feet) store fits in with the New York City vibe of the whole area along South Main. There’s a Pilates studio on the second floor, the busy Summer Moon coffee shop a block away and Birdy’s Bagels nearby.
Recluse Books is located in Fort Worth’s Near Southside neighborhood on April 23, 2026, and is an independent book store in the community. This weekend, they are one of five book stores taking part in a Fort Worth mini-crawl for National Independent Bookstore Day. (Maria Crane | Fort Worth Report/CatchLight Local/Report for America)
Knowing their neighborhood has proven to be an effective tool in providing the books people are seeking, said Josie Smith-Webster.
“It helped that we understand the area. We live here,” she said. “We eat here and hang out with friends. Still, it’s a bit of a guess and hope.”
The store leans heavily into books from smaller, independent presses as well as a lot of books originally written in languages from around the world and translated into English.
Fort Worth Bookstore Crawl
April 24-26
The bookstores crawl features:
“A lot of customers are searching for something a little more eclectic,” she said.
Smith-Webster also knows the joy of finding something unexpected in a bookstore.
“We’d like to be the place where people can find a book they hadn’t heard of, rather than or in addition to the book they came in looking for,” she said. “That’s what I’ve always loved about bookstores. Coming up on the table and seeing covers and authors I’ve never thought about before, and then it ends up being one of your favorites. I love that feeling.”
Webster said they opened at a fortuitous time for independent bookstores: People now want to spend less time online.
“As more and more of the world has become sort of algorithmically curated, or AI-generated, or whatever, people are looking for something that has a sort of a human or a hand-picked touch to it,” he said. “That has resulted in people becoming naturally more curious about things in a way that has been really exciting and fun for us as the owners of a bookstore.”
The pair are quick to recommend titles. Smith-Webster said she is excited by “Questions 27 & 28” by Karen Tei Yamashita, a fictionalized narrative based on the experience of those in Japanese-American internment camps during World War II.
“It’s smart, it’s an adventure. She’s just a great writer,” said Smith-Webster.
Webster said he is often surprised by what customers ask for.
“A trend I’ve seen recently (is) people looking for very niche history books,” he said.
A surprising number of people come in looking for books on the history of the calculator, such as author Keith Houston’s “Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator.”
Independent bookstores have been on the rise since the pandemic, said Heather Duncan, executive director of the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association, an organization that helps bookstores with backend processes and advocates for the association’s more than 300 members across 14 states in the West and Midwest.
In Texas, 11 new independent bookstores that are members of the organization have opened thus far in 2026. Last year, 25 opened.
Duncan sees two key trends in the world of bookstores. The first is an increase in customers wanting to physically interact with books. The second is a trend of more specialized bookstores catering to science fiction, horror, African-American authors and experiences, LGBTQ issues, children’s books or romance.
Romance bookstores are a particularly steamy category at the moment, Duncan said.
In North Texas, romance readers in Arlington got hot and bothered when Daydream Bookstore Cafe began to offer up romance books in a cafe setting. Last year, The Plot Twist opened in Denton, and according to a report from WFAA, the small shop has plenty of lovers, with 1,400 people visiting on opening weekend.
Not all bookstores have happy endings. Pantego Books in Dalworthington Gardens closed last year after three years in business.
Duncan said her organization works to help bookstore owners understand how to operate their stores.
“If we can get them as members before they actually open, we can usually save them a lot of headaches,” she said.
Chain bookstores are also getting a sequel, said JLL’s Franks.
“Barnes & Noble is also in the midst of a major expansion,” he said. The company’s push is fueled by strong sales in existing locations and a “local bookstore” strategy that gives more autonomy to individual store managers, he said.
Barnes & Noble opened three Dallas-Fort Worth area locations in 2024, in Allen, Flower Mound and Richardson. The company expects to open more than 60 new bookstores nationally in 2026, Franks said.
The New York-based chain once had three stores in Fort Worth, including a popular one in Sundance Square. It now has one location on South Hulen Street, a recently opened one in Burleson and has unveiled plans for another in Montgomery Plaza in the former Office Depot location at 401 Carroll St. The chain is also set to open a location in Mansfield in the Shops at Broad development.
Work to convert the site to a bookstore with a cafe at the 20,000-square-foot former Office Depot should be complete by October, according to a filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.
Recluse Books is located in Fort Worth’s Near Southside neighborhood on April 23, 2026, and is an independent book store in the community. The store was designed with the space in mind, including moveable furniture in the center to provide a larger space for gatherings and events. (Maria Crane | Fort Worth Report/CatchLight Local/Report for America)
Franks said bookstores are actually seeing some benefit from social media, particularly in attracting young people to the stores.
“BookTok, the books community on TikTok, is a major driver, sending younger shoppers into physical stores to browse curated displays,” he said.
While the customers drawn to bookstores by social media are bringing in a crowd looking for new titles, Webster said some old favorites always sell.
He cites the “Frog and Toad” series of children’s books, written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel.
“Who can’t relate to a character that says, ‘We’ve got to stop eating,’ as he eats another cookie,” he said. “That’s just classic.”
Bob Francis is business editor at the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at bob.francis@fortworthreport.org.
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