Once Upon a Bookshop: The Beginning - Part 1
Dream for Lease
Anyone who knows me (or has read the bio of my social media profiles) knows I once owned a beautiful little bookshop called The Wandering Jellyfish. It’s been a little over a year since TWJ closed, and I think now that I have enough distance mentally, emotionally, and physically from the endeavor, I can finally write about it.
For those who do not know about The Wandering Jellyfish Bookshop, it was a labor of love fueled by a passion for children’s books and the people who create them. Though the shop opened in 2021, it had been my dream for over a decade, a dream I had been actively pursuing since 2017 when I first joined the American Booksellers Association in hopes of gaining more knowledge about the industry so that, someday, I might be able to open my own bookshop.
Though joining the ABA was a crucial first step in the birth of TWJ, it wasn’t the inciting incident (a term used in writing to describe a moment or event that sets the whole story in motion). The inciting incident in this story was a psychic fair I’d attended in 2017 that led me to a tiny town called Niwot, where I fell in love with a little historic building that would become the future home of The Wandering Jellyfish Bookshop.
The building seemed as though it had been snatched straight from the pages of a picture book. It was the perfect size and design for a children’s bookstore (at least in my mind), with a porch that provided ample shade for outdoor seating, big picture windows perfect for book displays, and a cute little boardwalk that added to the fun old-fashioned charm—not to mention the beautiful Victorian gables flourishing the facade and the gorgeous trumpet vine climbing the siding and hanging from the porch roof.
Though the sign at the top of the building read Niwot Tribune (from 1921 to 1958, it had been the home of Niwot’s newspaper—a historical detail I found not only fitting but serendipidous), in 2017, it housed a shop called Bell, Book, Candle & Coffee which, I discovered, had only a few books and a lot of other things like stuffed animals, antique furniture, household items, and collectible knicknacks. It was an eclectic shop with an infamously eclectic owner who, it was said, would put oil on the benches outside to prevent people from sitting on them, and who had even kicked the UPS delivery man in the shin once (I should note here that these stories, while entertaining, are heresay; though, the UPS driver told me the shin story himself).
I joined the American Booksellers Association almost immediately after seeing the Niwot Tribune building. Even though I knew I couldn’t lease the space, it was as though the mere sight of it had enchanted me. Since that day, not one of my supposed psychic readings have come true, but seeing that building was divination enough for me. From that moment on, I knew opening a bookstore was no longer a dream. It was something I was meant to do; I just didn’t know when or how I would do it.