MILWAUKEE — Boswell Book Company on North Downer Avenue, on the East Side, is an independent bookstore owned by Daniel Goldin. He takes great pride in their selection and wants his store to stand out.
"I think I've always felt that a lot of bookstores do fiction really well, and they have a little trouble with some of the categories of non-fiction," Goldin says. "You know, in science, history, psychology, nature. I wanted to make sure those were strong areas too.
Like most business owners, Daniel, a native New Yorker, had to make adjustments because of the pandemic. When it first hit, he closed their doors to indoor browsing.
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"Somebody said, 'you did a pretty good job pivoting,' and I'm like it's all pivoting," he recalls. "It's like constant pivoting. We weren't really open for browsing for six months. We did a lot of deliveries, we became best friends with the Shorewood Post Office, we have a lot of close friends there now. We have a website that did more business in a week than it did in the previous year."
The store is back open for browsing now, but they keep the customers inside limited. Their wide selection of books, for all ages, is a big draw. So is Daniel, who is pretty dynamic in his own way.
"When we had the run on the puzzles, we had to get all of our puzzles on," he says. "We had to get our boxed cards on, we put a lot of our bargain books on, we put games on."