Hotchkiss painter, publisher, writer, former town council member and longtime used bookseller Tom Wills recently sold his bookstore on Bridge Street, where he traded, sold and collected some 17,000 books over 34 years. Tom and his wife, Jane, arrived in Hotchkiss in 1990.
"We bought a house right on the main street of Hotchkiss Bridge Street for $17,000 dollars and people thought we were paying too much for it and we were driving prices up or something. And it turned out that given the economy at the time, people were really happy to see a used bookstore," said Wills. "We started with about two-thousand of our own books. Slowly increase through the 90's and that was probably the peak of the business was probably the end of the 90's, early 2000 here."
"And were you really able to make a living out of it? " asked reporter Marty Durlin.
"For the first seven or eight years, we did make 100% living just from the bookstore. We kind of had to get it together and scramble a lot. But in 1996, a friend and I started the Hotchkiss Merchant Herald, which is a whole other story, turned into the other half of my income," said Wills, adding, " The most popular thing that we got people to drive all the way from Junction and further away is there's a probably the largest like collection of new age Buddhist, Hindu, eclectic around. You know, you don't see that news book stores too much, very good Western regional historic section. Good good general history section."
" And how did you organize them or sometimes I couldn't tell if it was organized?" asked Durlin.
"It was it was it was organized. People would ask that and they go, Is this in any kind of order? I go, Yeah. It's all the all the fiction mystery thriller, horror book, science fiction. And then in each fiction category, they were alphabetized by the author's last name. So once I pointed somebody to whatever they were interested in, it was they could find. They didn't have to dig through piles and piles and piles, like at least I knew where everything was," replied Wills.
Local writer and editor Betsy Marston was an early patron of the bookstore talked about the bookstore and Wills.
"I'm not sure. I remember the first time I walked into Tom Will's store, but I do have memories that go back several decades when I would take the kids and. And there was Tom seated behind this desk and surrounded by dusty, small rooms filled with books. And we'd say,' Well, where is the fiction and where are the children's books?' And he always knew where everything was," said Martson adding, " He was a fellow book-phile, I mean, to the enth degree and I thought the star of Hotchkiss,."
Wills reminisced about running the store, "The finest thing about running the used bookstore was, was when people would just bring in boxes of books and go, oh, here's, you know, five boxes of books have gone by, you know, sort of like Christmas. If you love books, it's like, gosh, I wonder what's in there."
Tom's wife, Jane, died about eight years ago, followed by a series of changes, including those wrought by COVID.
"The library wouldn't take donations for the sales. They didn't do any book sales during COVID. So they would say, go take them to Tom or at the bookstore. And so I just got tons of really great stuff during COVID. It was a big leap forward," Wills said. " It seemed like business was. Pretty good during Covid. We had to close for one month. When we close for a month, I realized that. Maybe I didn't want to be in retail my whole life. Just staying home for a month was really nice in the beginning of the bookstore. "
"Basically we had to go out to the yard sales. We could auctions to sit there all night to bid on a trailer load of books or something or buy boxes of books and and everybody that came in there, books were just valuable. You would after them and they would go in and they'd want to dicker for a while. And that slowly changed over the years and the last few years have gotten. So people hardly anybody comes in and tries to sell me stuff," said Wills wrapping up his story.
" I mean, he's unique. I don't know that many people who would live in that little bookstore. And you had the feeling that he was there always. It was a treat to go there and talk to him and talk books. And I'm sorry that he won't be there. Now, who will be there? " asked Marston.
New owner Craig Stumbles will reopen the bookstore in the spring for the cave.
