“I just love books,” Emily Peterson exclaims as she smiles next to a Little Free Library on Spokane’s South Hill.
Peterson owns Page 42 Bookstore with her best friend and has plenty of inventory coming through during any given month. So much so that when she runs out of room in her store or gets too many duplicates, she usually spends an entire day driving around sections of Spokane and refilling Little Free Libraries that are running bare.
Emily picks a section of town, like the South Hill, and uses the “Little Free Libraries” app to see which libraries are running low on books. In some cases, the libraries will indicate what kind of books the owners need to replenish.
“This enables us to directly deliver books to the neighborhood where people are reading them,” Emily says.
Ever the marketer, Emily will also toss in a coupon or two to her store that gives someone a free book up to $5 in value, or $5 off another book.
While Emily relies heavily on the app to map her routes, she doesn’t use it exclusively.
“If I see another library, I’ll stop…If you stick a box in your yard, with no label at all and fill it with books, people will take them,” she says. “It’s really important to me that that opportunity is available to everyone all of the time.”
Emily always makes sure books that appeal to kids and middle schoolers are stocked at libraries where kids have access to them.
“We get a lot more of these than we can sell (kids books), but they’re also in the highest demand in the community,” Emily says as she stocks one library with Judy Blume and other assorted kids books. “So middle schoolers can get access to books during the summer and on weekends and after school hours.”
It’s a labor of love, often taking up a full work day, but Emily Peterson simply does it because she loves books and wants to share them with the world.
‘It’s not really about getting a thank you,” she says. “I just love books.”
