Sinclair Inlet Book Co., featuring new and used titles, opened in July at 821 Bay St., Port Orchard, Wash. Kitsap Daily News reported that owner Terry Heath, who launched Bookshop Under the Stairs in Town Square Mall in 2022, had been "looking for a way out from the cupboard under the stairs."
"I really wanted to find a spot, and when this opened up, I figured I'd better grab it," he said, adding that Bookshop Under the Stairs is expected to remain open until March 2025, when his lease of the mall space expires.
Heath noted that he and the mall had not always been on the best of terms, a situation that escalated with mall ownership's decision not to allow a previously planned Drag Queen Story Time session last year for what it called safety concerns. "It became sort of a longstanding, 'Yeah, I'm not going to be staying here,' " he said. "It's just a variety of things, but I don't want to bad-mouth the mall. Obviously, the retail economy isn't great right now either."
While sales numbers had steadily increased at the mall store, they did not hit the level Heath needed to maintain his current space, prompting the search for a smaller spot with a lower overhead. "The pie is only so big, and you can slice it so many ways, so it's more sustainable to have the lower overhead," he noted.
Port Orchard now has three indie bookshops downtown: Sinclair Inlet Book Co. joins Salmonberry Books, and Find the Path Books.
"The more the merrier," said Karena Fagan, co-owner of Find the Path Books. "I hope we can bring different styles of books for different kinds of people. We were kind of hoping that at one point, we could get together and do some kind of thing between the three stores. Like a book crawl sort of idea."