422 new indie bookstores opened in the US last year, apparently
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R. S. Breed Founder
Some good news for once. Reported by Good Good Good, citing the American Booksellers Association: 422 new independent bookstores opened in 2025, a 31% increase.
https://goodgoodgood.co/articles/independent-bookstores-on-the-rise
That's secondhand reporting, so I'd hold the exact figures loosely until the ABA's own numbers are easy to check. The direction is the encouraging part. US data too, not ours, though anyone who's walked past a new little bookshop here lately might suspect something similar is going on.
Why an ebook-first indie should care at all: the wall between self-published books and bookshops has been getting lower. Since February, Draft2Digital has been distributing ebooks to Bookshop.org, which makes self-published ebooks available through indie bookstores. More stores means more of that.
Getting print onto actual shelves is a different and harder conversation, and the owner of your local shop will tell you more about that than I can. Which is a decent reason to go and be a customer there first.