ASHLAND – After months of preparation and a change in location, Ashland Books is opening today at 301 Orange St.
Ashland Books is a used bookstore owned by Wes Wyse, who also owns Useful Junk, an antique store in Sullivan.
Originally, the bookstore was set to open in the former Stickman Video Game store on Main Street but circumstances forced Ashland Books to relocate.
Hannah Farley will help Wyse run Ashland Books. The duo has been working all week to bring in bookcases and fill them.
Wyse said they will expand into the rest of the building as more bookcases and more books arrive.
Wyse decided to open Ashland Books after the book section of Useful Junk began to overflow its room.
“The books have kind of expanded beyond what we can handle in the antique store so I’m opening a shop,” Wyse said. “The books were confined to a room and then they started expanding outward and outward until they were taking up valuable antique shop space so we have started packing those away. And we’ve been buying real heavy. We’ve found some collections recently that we picked up. So we’re in good shape. We’ve got enough to open a shop now.”
Ashland Books will buy used books, but Wyse said they won’t buy every book that comes in the store.
“We’re going to be focused on quality. We’re not going to have a lot of out-of-date cookbooks or money investing books from the 70s. Primarily modern and up-to-date kind of books. But we’ll have plenty of antique, collectible books, too,” Wyse said. “We’re not going to have books that are damaged or have a lot of writing in them or missing the dust jacket. We’re going to have books that are nice.”
Wyse said prices for fiction books will be $2 for paperbacks and $3 for hardcovers and non-fiction books will range from $3 to $10. Some antique or collectible books may be priced over $10.
Ashland Books will be open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Follow the Ashland Books Facebook page for more updates. The store’s phone number is 419-606-0453 and the website is Ashlandbooks.com.
