Resilient Book Buyers Team Marks 25 Years in East Charlotte

Richard Rathers has been many things: a rehab counselor, a coal miner, a teacher here in the United States and abroad. But for most Charlotteans, at least those with a literary bent, he is known as the owner and operator of Book Buyers, which is among the last of the proper used bookshops in Charlotte. 

And as of August, he’s been filling that role for the last 25 years. Right by his side the whole time has been his daughter Lee Rathers. In terms of local, homegrown literary culture, the Rathers’ are indispensable. And, quite befitting the proprietors of a bookshop, they are a couple of characters. 

When we met recently to chat about the store’s history, Richard was dressed in an understated Hawaiian shirt (is such a thing possible?) and his affect was laconic but firm. He has the confidence of a classroom teacher, of a man used to organizing, encouraging and convincing people. 

Lee is the more energetic of the two, with curls and big spectacles topping an easy smile. She lets her father take the lead in our conversation, but stays connected and engaged the whole time, offering points of clarification or diverting us toward an anecdote from the store’s history — or from Richard’s lifelong journey toward becoming, in his own words, “an ideal book seller.”

Lee’s mother, Pam, died just shy of Lee’s first birthday, so the story of the Rathers has been a father-and-daughter adventure, with Lee following Richard through the Deep South, broken up by stints in New Jersey and Utah (that’s where the coal mining took place) as well as a year spent in East Anglia, England. 

They landed in Charlotte in the 1990’s. Richard taught physical science at Harding University High School in west Charlotte. During our conversation, which took place a few doors down from the shop at Cafe VisArt, he said, “I was looking for something to do on the weekends, as if I didn’t have papers to grade, and I ran across a book called How to Start and Run a Used Bookstore. I read it — and I read it again.” 

He spent much of his free time thereafter hitting up yard sales and auctions wherever he could find them, collecting about 10,000 books over a two-years span.  

Book Buyers opened their doors in Plaza Midwood at the corner of The Plaza and Central Avenue in August 1999. The Rathers quickly found that the neighborhood was hungry for a bookshop. Before they’d even had their grand opening, while still setting up the shelves and stocking inventory, people would knock on the door and ask when they could come in. 

You’ve just got to love book people.

Over the next 20 years, the Rathers duo became foundational to the neighborhood, a resource for bibliophiles and cat lovers alike. The shop’s cats are well-known and beloved. Currently there are three: Junior, Inky and Deena. 

Those three are generally friendlier than the original shop cat, the late great Paige, who was donated to the shop as a kitten by a gentleman living in the alley out back. Paige was gorgeous but not exactly cuddly and, despite a very clearly worded warning sign at the front of the shop, she took more than her fair share of blood tribute from shoppers who tested her good will. 

In 2011, Lee opened a shop within a shop at Book Buyers. The Greener Apple consists of a small section toward the front of the bookshop and offers vegan goods, things to eat and things to wear. 

While they share physical space, they are two separate businesses. This detail seems important to the Rather clan when we talk, whether that’s for tax reasons or issues of familial boundary-setting is anyone’s guess. If only someone had thought to ask them in the context of an interview… 

But I digress, and as I am entirely unqualified to judge the merits of vegan goods, I won’t. The snacks seem nice and are displayed in an aesthetically pleasing fashion. If you have questions you should go in and ask Lee. You just might find yourself wondering the halls three hours later asking yourself how you got there. 

The Rathers are forced to move out of Plaza Midwood

The unfortunate thing about doing something special and cool in a neighborhood where other imaginative and hardworking people are doing cool things is that eventually the vultures show up and begin the oh-so-important work of extracting every last possible cent of value from a given territory in the name of our lord and savior: Capital. 

As it goes in South End and NoDa, so it goes in Plaza-Midwood. Some businesses manage to hold on, and some get priced out. 

Read More: ESSAY: A Farewell to Plaza Midwood

While I wasn’t in the least perturbed to learn of the departure of a certain dreadful sushi restaurant (sometime can we please talk about how that place must have been a front for heroin operations, because there is no way a sushi joint that bad could stay in business for that long), but I was genuinely upset when I learned toward the end of 2021 that Book Buyers wouldn’t be able to stay in their Plaza Midwood home. I feared the worst.

Happily, the Rathers team — Richard, Lee and the integral Virginia O’Riley, who’s been there nearly since the beginning — is one made up of resilient navigators. With the help of an army of volunteers and a fleet of trucks, they landed on their feet. 

They opened the doors at their new location in Eastway Crossing in February of 2022. Nestled in the Coolest Strip Mall in America™ amongst a motley crew of local businesses including VisArt Video, Tommy’s Pub and Open Door Studios, Book Buyers has weathered the storm by focusing on the essentials: The Books, The Cats, The People. 

Amazon accounts for roughly half of all book sales in America in 2024. Their dominance has even laid waste to big brick-and-mortar chains like Borders or WaldenBooks; it’s been even rougher for the small independent operations. However, they do have a secret weapon that the big guys don’t: Customer loyalty for a place like Book Buyers can be fierce.

When asked about online sales, Richard Rathers seems flatly uninterested. Based on Amazon’s ability to underprice books they have effectively cut other sellers out of the game. There is no way to make it profitable. But this doesn’t seem to be the real reason for the lack of interest. 

It’s an issue that simply doesn’t seem to be what interests the Rathers (or, for that matter, Richard’s long-time companion Virginia, whose design and mastery of its labyrinthine layout is unquestioned). It’s about people coming into the store and discovering what they need, maybe even what they didn’t know they needed. After all, you can never pet a cat on Amazon. 

It’s a more relaxed and organic experience than much of our algorithmically entrained daily lives and it’s good for us; it scratches a certain dormant hunter-gatherer instinct. There is exquisite pleasure to be found in letting one’s eyes wander over the spines of the books, the background chatter of other customers a sort of incidental music to accompany the pursuit of that obscure object of desire: the book that is looking for you just as you are looking for it. 

This is the magic of bookstores. You don’t have this experience online. You can only have this experience in person. In real time. In the real world. 

Much like that other ancient and storied source of pleasure, the brothel, used book stores know they can always count on those customers who might be described as Specialists. Richard describes with relish acquiring caches of books on engineering, programming, and other niche topics like a treasure hunter might discuss the horde of Agamemnon or Tutankhamun’s Tomb. 

Talking about one recent acquisition, he mentions a “shelf full of books on chess.” At this, Lee jumps in with a smile: “Oh, we love chess. Just two days ago a guy bought a stack of those chess books. When I priced them I said, ‘They are not going to stay for very long,’’ and sure enough… They know they better buy them now because they aren’t going to stick around.” 

As someone who has a group chat with friends to alert each other of new arrivals at Book Buyers, I can relate to Chess Guy.

Book Buyers becomes a community hub

On one recent visit to the store I spoke with another customer, a professor of Greek and Latin whose tastes straddle the line between the arcane and the mundane. 

During our conversation, Dr. Johnson provided what seems like a typical Book Buyers customer profile: “I’ve been going since I moved here in 2017, back when they were in Plaza Midwood and I probably go three or four times a month. First I head straight to classics, then crime, then general fiction, then sci-fi. I know I’m probably going to walk out of there with multiple books even if I swear I’m just going to browse.”

Regular customers and the community they create are what keep the doors open. During the same visit when I spoke with Dr. Johnson, I heard multiple distinct groups coming in and discussing the store’s book club — books they’d read, what they were reading next, and how much they’d enjoyed the conversation. 

It was a fascinating testament to the community magnetism of a good bookstore. These were wildly different people, at least at first glance, and it seemed like the only thing they really had in common was Book Buyers. 

Even though it has been baked into the shop ethos since the beginning, as Lee has taken more and more responsibility for the store she seems to be leaning into Book Buyer’s role as a community center. Since moving to Eastway Crossing, the shop has been hosting more events. 

In addition to the book club, there have been author readings, including a pair of grand opening events in June 2022 featuring the luminous Amy Bagwell and fellow poets Xavia Miles, de’Angelo DIA and novelist Jeff Jackson. 

The Rathers have also cultivated a successful partnership with WDAV, through which Book Buyers plays host to the radio station’s pop-up record sale. The next one is scheduled for Aug. 24 from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. 

There is a real center of gravity to Book Buyers, and one gets the impression that in an unpretentious and ultimately very grounded way, Richard and Lee understand that at this point, after 25 years, Book Buyers is an institution. 

In a city where the tension between organic culture and corporate simulacra is palpable, I don’t feel I’m overstating my case when I say that Charlotte needs Book Buyers.