5 Questions: Commonplace Reader's Elizabeth Young

YARDLEY, PA — A resident of the Yardley area since 1991, Elizabeth Young opened Commonplace Reader, a book shop on Yardley's Main Street, about a year ago.

Since then, Young, who had recently retired from a career in information technology, has steered her fledgling business through a virus pandemic and the resulting shutdown, along with other first-year efforts.

For Five Questions, she talks about running a bookstore in the era of Amazon, as well as which author she'd love to invite to her shop.

What inspired you to open a book store in Yardley?

As a long time reader, I have wanted to open a bookstore in Yardley Borough for many years but had other time and financial commitments (such as raising and educating my three children!). I worked for many years in the healthcare industry and upon retirement was finally able to invest my time and energy into my dream job.

The first year for any business is going to be a challenge. In your case, you had to face the coronavirus shutdown on top of everything else. How were things during the strictest parts of the shutdown and how are things going in that regard now?

During the first days, I contacted my tech team to allow direct ship-to-home delivery. I also began working on a monthly newsletter and went to the bookstore each day as the final deliveries were made and then to process orders every day. I focused all communication to my website, making suggestions and lists a primary focus. I established Zoom calls to ensure that our book clubs were able to read and meet.

With people able to order any book they want online, what do you feel still draws customers into a local book shop?

Browsing and recommendations are key to book purchases — discussing the book and particular tastes help select a book that the reader will enjoy. Browsing and buying a book online can also be done with virtual input. Many of our staff picks are posted online to encourage online shopping and to enable people to think about the type of book or genre they may want to browse when they come into the store. Staff Recommendations and Suggestions was especially useful when we were in the red COVID-19 phase and the store was completely closed. Commonplace Reader is surviving and will be a continued presence in Yardley Borough due to the great community support and love of reading.

What have been some of the most popular/most requested books during your first year?

With the advent of Black Lives Matter, we had a tremendous amount of requests for anti-racism books for all ages. New York Times bestsellers are always good sellers and our book club selections are favorites with both those who attend and those interested in what the book clubs are reading.

If you could invite any author, living or dead, to your store to do a reading, who would you invite?

I would invite a writer like Mary Oliver, who wrote about the wonder of nature, human-dog relationships and spiritual connections to the earth in daily life.

Five Questions is a Patch feature profiling residents who make our community the unique place that it is. If there's someone you think would be interesting for us to feature, let local editor Doug Gross know at doug.gross@patch.com.