I Love Book Stores: “There are 6,001 bookstores in the United States. Well, not really. There are 6,001 non-chain bookstores in the United States.  Again, not really accurate.  There are, however, 6,001 bookstores on this map of bookstores in the United States.  Quite a few caveats apply, but I’m going to run with that number for a moment…The map, beyond being a three year labor of love, is a product of insomnia brought on by the stress of an out-of-state move with my family.  Awake for no good reason and stewing over the logistics of moving from Pennsylvania to South Carolina, I needed something to occupy my time between 3 and 7 a.m.  Thus, the map of bookstores in the United States was born. At first, I was simply busying my brain with the task of searching for lists of bookstores from Bookseller Association websites and maps.  My epiphany, if you could call it that, was that there was not any single resource, online or in print, that could be considered a comprehensive roster of all brick and mortar bookstores and booksellers in the United States. I asked myself who would be interested in such a list? People who love bookstores, of course.  The seed of an idea took root and while I continued to add bookstores to the map, I also began to accumulate additional detail about, and related to, bookstores.  The anchor of iheartbookstores will always be The Map, but I hope to enhance that with original and linked content appealing to people who are as enthralled by bookstores as I am….According to 2018 articles on CBS News and NPR, there are between 2,200 and 2,300 independent bookstores in the United States.  Seems a bit low to me and probably hinges on how independent is defined and who’s doing the counting. The Map here is clearly contradictory to those numbers, but what’s notable is that since 2009 there have been more than 550 new bookstores opened in the United States, an unprecedented resurrection from the decade prior that saw Bookstores close in droves…”