Four Questions with Forage Books

I dropped in to visit Tamlyn Ancone at Forage Books on a crisp autumn Friday. I hadn’t been to Kennett Square in at least 15 years and was amazed to see how the town had turned around. The business district was full and hopping, with cafes, boutiques, restaurants, bakeries, gift shops, and now a bookstore. There are now also Pride flags everywhere, in the midst of a quite conservative county. The main business in the region is mushroom farming, which means there is also a large population of immigrant and migrant workers and families. This also means ICE has been very active, making protecting customers and attendees a reality that stores have to work within.

 Tell me a little about the store

 Tamlyn: Being here now is honestly a little bit kismet. I have always dreamed of opening a bookstore. My mom had a book and music store outside of Chicago when she was in her early twenties, and later became good friends with Dick and his daughter Suzanna Hermans, owners of Oblong Books. So I kind of grew up around the industry and was always really interested in starting one. In 2025 I had a work from home tech position so started putting together a business plan. I looked at a few spaces that hadn’t worked out, then one day I was walking past this space and people were in here painting. I turned to my best friend and said, “Oh man it's such a shame that this place looks like it has been rented out.”  The next morning at 5:00 AM my friend was taking her morning walk through town and sent me a picture showing a For Lease sign in the window. So I waited until a reasonable hour and then called! After that everything went faster than I expected. I didn’t think I’d be open until 2027, but once this space was available I could open in February of 2026 instead. This is such a great block – a café, a boutique, a gift shop, a Mexican bakery, restaurants – and everyone really works together and hears each other and it's been really lovely.

What’s working well for the store as a business right now?

Tamlyn: First, definitely being in this business district!  What's been so surprising to me has been how much of my business comes from regulars. The community has come out in droves and has really shown that this was something that they missed and needed. I have people who come in on the same day every week. Honestly, just building those relationships and that trust is so important, so when someone returns I can say “I have a book for you that you’ll love.”  That's so cool.

What parts of how the wider book industry interacts with Indie bookstores would you like to see changed or improved?

Tamlyn: How to get authors to our store. I think the [Edelweiss Event] grids can be tough and confusing, especially for newer booksellers. There’s a secret code we’re never told about, such as knowing that you have to report to the New York Times in order for your pitches to even be looked at. Obviously you can learn that eventually through regional and national associations and the Professional Booksellers School but it would be great to have a way to know that up front. I also get frustrated with the number of bigger authors who on their social media push for Indie bookstores but then when they are coming to an area with smaller cities are only going to a Barnes & Noble. That is really tough to stomach.

Our book club is hosting author Nina LaCour in November. [Note: she’s the author of “Meet Me in the Garden,” which Tamlyn strongly suggested I read, based on other books we discussed, and I did and WOW.] This is happening because I’m active on social media and Nina, who follows Indie bookstores, reached out to me to say that she was going to be in town to stay in The Bookhouse Hotel and that if our book club could choose “Meet Me in the Garden” she would come and talk with us.  So we’re doing that, and it’s such a special thing. But I know that if I had written that as an ask in the event grid she herself would never have known we existed.

So I think that’s the hardest thing for me. My customers want authors in the store. When I bring in authors—even if they've never heard of them—they're buying the book, they’re interfacing with them. They want that human connection. That's part of why there's a resurgence in in brick and mortar and Indie bookstores. So I think it be incredibly helpful to find a way to connect more directly with authors who want to visit or call into a book club, especially with traditionally published authors.  A way outside of the event grids and book tours.  

Third question – What Keeps you Up at Night?

Tamlyn: As the only daughter of high achieving parents, the thing for me is that I am constantly worried that I'm going to let somebody down. I don't care if I let myself down; I don't care if I get to the end of my three-year lease and I did my best and it didn't work, but I do care if somebody comes in and they don't see themselves represented on the shelves. I do care if they feel like they weren't heard when they were asking for a recommendation. I do care if the community doesn't feel like I care about them. So that's what I am ruminating constantly on, either a conversation I have in the store, or what more could I be doing to give back to the community. I also think a lot about our city’s large Hispanic population and how to do programming for them. Often here their community is not included—not purposely excluded, but it can be a bit of a segregated town. I have a large bilingual children's book selection, and I have adult books in Spanish too, so when Spanish speaking customers come in I do make it known, including asking for titles they might want or a genre they want to see more of.  

I'm constantly trying to think about how can I make sure that everybody who walks in here sees it as their store too. It’s not just mine. It was never about it being just mine. I always wanted it to feel like a community hub and so that's really the thing that keeps me up at night—how can I make that possible?

Recently a mom and daughter came in and the daughter was raving about a book in the YA section. I asked her if she wanted to put out a shelf talker to help the book sell. Later that day her mom came back in alone and said,  “I just want to thank you. She's having a really hard time at school and you really energized her. She doesn't usually talk to me but after talking to you about the book we went on a walk and she talked to me about it. She said the conversation with you was such a special thing. I really want to thank you.” That's what it's all about for me, more than anything else, is to make sure that someone walks out of here believing “That person really saw me” or “I was able to find book represents me on the shelf.” I love that.

What’s working well for you right now in terms of events and/or programming?

Tamlyn: We’re in the process of building out a back room as an event space, but because that’s not ready just yet we've been keeping events minimal. It’s not feasible in the space that we have to host events, but author-led story times have been popular [the store has a small children’s section set off up four steps behind the register]. People want to bring their kids to meet an author! I've done a couple story times without an author, just having someone from the community read the books, and that doesn't perform nearly as well. Kids are so excited to meet the person who made the book.

In general when we host author book signings, these are working really well. People come, get to know the author and buy the book, and look forward to the next person who is coming. Also, while it’s not exactly programming, getting our name out into the community is bringing people in. New customers will say they saw our name as a donor at a community fair and come find us. What we donated was just a small basket with four books, but our name is there and people are excited to find out there is a book store. We are also making special bookmarks that The Bookhouse Hotel will put in all their rooms, offering a small discount. Their hotel doesn’t have a lobby or gift shop, so we also carry their branded merchandise, which they’d never been able to offer before.

Anything Else?

Tamlyn: I have a new answer for your second question about the book industry! It is making us crazy how antiquated all of the systems are. Signing up for ordering directly through publishers is so difficult that it’s nearly impossible. There are twenty different forms, and then you are told to email one form to one certain person, but then email another form to a different person. They don’t have systems that make any sense. HarperCollins has pushed really hard about how wonderful their new “Hub” is. And while in a lot of ways it’s great, you know what you can’t do? You can’t export your order as file to upload into your POS, which means every time I order directly from HarperCollins I’m going into Ipage, making a collection, then exporting that and putting into my POS as a PO from HC. I’ve emailed their Help Center for advice and was told, “Oh no, we don’t have the ability to do an export of your files. You can manually enter the into your POS.” But why should I have to type in forty different titles by hand when the information exists in their system?

I think that for how advanced everything has become, tech-wise, it would be great to see us catch up in some of those ways without going down an AI rabbit hole. I don't want anything to do with that, I don't think any of us do, but it would be great to have tools that don’t look like I'm working in Windows 95.

Forage Books is located at 121 W State Street Kennett Square, PA 19348.

When visiting, check out The Bookhouse Hotel, La Michoacana for authentic Mexican ice cream, and The Mushroom Cap gift shop directly across from Forage.