Steve Costa and Kate Levinson were Inverness weekenders with no retail experience when they bought a bookstore in 2002, in Point Reyes Station. At the time, the store was open mostly on the weekends and new titles filled up just a card table. But the couple, who left Oakland to live here full time, quickly turned the shop into a bustling community hub that hosts events pretty much every week.
They announced this week that, 14 years later, they are putting the store up for sale. The sale includes about 12,000 books, roughly 40 percent new and 60 percent used; merchandise; computers and a point-of-sale system; shelving; most of the art that fills the shop; the website; and the “community supported bookstore” program. The price is not being disclosed.
Mr. Costa, once a consultant for community engagement, and Kate Levinson, a psychotherapist and author, have cherished the bookstore.
But even with three dedicated part-time employees who have each worked there for over a decade, the business takes an enormous amount of time and energy. As the couple ages and considers, as Mr. Costa put it, “rounding third base and heading for home,” they want to pursue other work and experiences and spend more time with their grandchildren.
“Both Kate and I feel there is work and life beyond West Marin,” Mr. Costa said.
He also wants to serve as an elder and mentor here—and find time to rest. “I also want to be still, and wander for a while. I’m finding that in stillness there’s a lot to be learned from oneself and about the universe,” he said.
Ms. Levinson, meanwhile, wants to focus on her emotional currency work, which helps women explore the relationship between gender and money, and plans to write a second book about it.
The couple will remain in Inverness, where he will continue his work with Black Mountain Circle and the West Marin Fund, two nonprofits he helped found. (Sometimes the lines between the bookstore, the couple and Black Mountain Circle seem blurry, but it is Black Mountain Circle that puts on the Geography of Hope conference, which may or may not happen next year.)
Before Mr. Costa and Ms. Levinson owned the bookstore, they were weekenders in Inverness for about six years, and knew only a couple of people. But that included Jill Westley, owner of the Brown Study Bookshop, which opened in 1989. One evening, over dinner, Ms. Westley, who had been trying to sell the shop for a year, told them she was lowering the purchase price.
“The next day,” Ms. Levinson said, Steve “woke up and said, ‘I want to buy the bookstore.’ Which seemed like it dropped from the sky.”
Friend Claire Peaslee said she watched Mr. Costa walk out of the bookstore the day he purchased it, apparently still in disbelief at the decision he had made. But he also has a vision for the future. “Clearly he was beginning to hatch as an agent of change in this community,” she said.
In a way, the business was a natural fit for Mr. Costa, who had worked as a consultant specializing in community engagement in Oakland, work that paved the way for the expansion of the bookstore’s activities. They organized a plethora of events—over 850, they say—including book and poetry readings, author events, book clubs and fundraisers. In total, they say they helped raise $550,000 for local groups.
In 2008, the bookstore began co-publishing a new literary journal, the West Marin Review. They also started a major biennial literary conference, called Geography of Hope, and recently created a new conference called Call of the Forest.
The programs, Ms. Peaslee said, have been a natural fit for the area.
Chris Giacomini, owner of Toby’s Feed Barn, which has hosted many bookstore events, spoke highly of those gatherings. “It was an honor to have Michael Pollan here at Toby’s,” he said.
The couple also started an innovative program modeled on community-supported agriculture. Through their community-supported bookstore project, customers can buy credit at the bookstore; they can use it at any time, but the deposit helps keep finances steady through the slower winter months. It has 300 members.
They also put their imprint on the shelves, making a new creativity section and featuring local authors prominently.
As the couple reminisced last Friday afternoon about West Marin’s “slower pace” in the earlier days of their ownership—these days about 80 percent of customers are tourists—Ms. Levinson said she cherished the friendships they’ve cultivated.
“We’ve had the advantage of developing relationships over the counter, where people would hang out and want to schmooze and talk about books,” she said. “We had different conversations because we were surrounded by books.”
They have also learned how difficult and time-consuming it is to run a small business. Even so, sales have risen almost every year, save for two during the recession, and though they face competition from bargain behemoths like Amazon, large and small-scale movements to buy local have sprung up in the past decade.
The couple hopes that a new owner will infuse the bookstore with fresh energy and perspective, and learn to cater to a new demographic: millennials, whom they said have increased as a proportion of customers in the past year. And importantly, they said, millennials buy books.
Though they hope to complete a sale by the end of this year, they said they will wait for the right successor. For them, that is a buyer primarily interested in being an integral part of a local ecosystem that supports nonprofits and a healthy community. And who is ready for a big commitment.
“The bookstore has been my identity for the past 14 years,” Mr. Costa said.