Roundabout Books Opens a Huge Store in Greenfield

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Inside the new store, you can see the mayor in the red coat browsing for books.
Inside the new store, you can see the mayor in the red coat browsing for books.

It’s not every day in 2023, that someone decides to go all in on books. Printed books, the kind we all used to read a lot more of and even take out of the library.   Yesterday in Greenfield, Mass, I visited one of the biggest bookstores in New England, and it just opened on Pierce Street in a residential neighborhood.

Inside the two-story building that houses the new Roundabout Books in Greenfield, Mass.
Inside the two-story building that houses the new Roundabout Books in Greenfield Mass.

There are two floors and rows and rows of shelves. There were seats to rest and read a book, tea, and snacks, and a huge crowd lined up to pay for books.  I even saw Greenfield’s mayor Roxanne Wedegarten buying a stack of books.

Daniel Goldin, owner of Roundabout Books.
Daniel Goldin, owner of Roundabout Books.

How do they get these books, I thought.  The answer to come is brilliant.  Daniel Goldin is the proprietor of the new store in addition to the successful Boswell’s Books in Shelburne Falls, told me how they do it.

They have a fleet of white steel donation containers that they station at local landfills. People donate the books into the bins and they get put on the shelves….how about that!?

Doing a service to local dump-users to offering to take their books, and in turn making a profit by selling them with no cost to obtain them. Brilliant!

I look forward to returning to this wonderful store soon. And I promise to keep putting books in the bins to keep their supply up and running.