Fundraiser for the Paperback Exchange!

To our amazing neighbors, community and book lovers everywhere.

Early Thursday morning, a burst water main flooded The Paperback Exchange, completely filling the basement and a good 12+” of the main floor. As you can imagine, that’s devastating for a bookstore. We are heartbroken. Probably 70% of our stock is completely ruined, over 100,000 books lost, as most of our inventory was stored in the basement, which was fully submerged.

Of course, the entire bookstore needs to have remediation done to remove the wet books, shelves, carpet, etc. as well as numerous repairs.

Our insurance will not cover everything, as the damage is so extensive (our coverage just didn't go that far). However, in the next few months we will have numerous expenses, most importantly to help the 5 hardworking employees who are now without work.

In addition, bookstore owners Marion and Keith Hersey live around the corner from the Paperback Exchange, and there was so much water from the burst pipe that it actually flooded their basement, and currently the insurance is denying their claims.

We've created this GoFundMe to humbly ask for your support to help us to cover some basic expenses for the coming months. Sadly, insurance will not fully cover the loss of our precious books that we collected over the course of 50 years. We hope this GoFundMe will help us with the losses we sustained, support our employees during this time and give us a jump start on a potential reopening down the road.

The future is currently uncertain. We don't know at this time what a new incarnation of the bookstore will look like, but we hope to make the best of the books that were saved. We really appreciate the outpouring of support people have given us online and in person, and especially all of those hardworking people who showed up to move the books that didn't get soaked.

We set an initial goal of $20,000, however any funding that we may receive over this goal will be put to good use in the hopes of reviving the bookstore.

If you are able, please consider donating, and please share with your book-loving friends and family!

Thank you so much.

Marion, Keith, Andy and Pepper Hersey