Two friends and their adventure in the used book industry

A good book is often described as a ticket to another world or a personal passport to an epic journey. For most of us, the quest concludes when the book is put down. But for Casey Holland and Eleanor Richards, who collect, catalog and sell countless used books as co-owners of Wayfaring Booksellers in REO Town, the adventure never ends. 

Holland and Richards cut their teeth as booksellers working at Curious Book Shop and Archives, two groovy used bookstores in East Lansing that local bookworms consider a home away from home. Keeping track of all the b o o k s that go in and out of a busy u s e d bookstore can be dizzying, but Holland and Richards became so familiar with the process that starting up a shop of their own didn’t seem like too frightening of an ordeal. 

“Eleanor and I go talking about our dreams of one day owning a bookstore. ‘One day, we can make this happen’ We had this realization of, ‘Why don’t we do this now?’ We started putting in the work, researching what licenses we needed and a few months later, we got it rolling,” Holland said. 

Holland said she grew up with a fascination for books and reading, but Curious and Archives, where she and Richards still work when not busy with Wayfaring Booksellers, was her introduction to the world of dealing used books. Her experience working there gave her the know-how to get her own store off the ground. 

“I grew up in a really small town, which didn’t have a store like Curious. I moved to East Lansing for school in 2013, found Curious and immediately fell in love,” Holland said. 

Richards is also a lifelong reader, but truly developed her fascination for used and vintage books during the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Without much else to do in quarantine, a good book made a fine companion. 

“Coming from a professional background in theater, I found solace in books again during the onset of the pandemic, as the entertainment industry shut down,” Richards said. 

In order to make Wayfaring Booksellers a reality, Holland and Richards had to take on a ton of research. That meant sorting out the proper licenses they would need to sell new books from big publishers like Ingram, figuring out the best places to find treasure troves of rare used books and filing all of the necessary paperwork to make Wayfaring Booksellers an official business. 

Holland said the goal for Wayfaring Booksellers is to offer literature written by authors from marginalized communities. And with a constantly expanding selection as Holland and Richards get their hands on more books, genres like mystery and science fiction and other obscure selections will also have a growing presence on the shelves at Wayfaring Booksellers. 

“We’re working on building our queer literature and author section. We want people to find a lot of different voices in our store,” Holland said. 

“Opening Wayfaring Booksellers has been a surreal experience,” Richards said. “Our little bookshop grew suddenly from a small experiment between friends into a local business with support from our community.” 

Wayfaring Booksellers 

Tuesday-Thursday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. 

Friday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

REO Town Marketplace 

1027 S. Washington Ave., Lansing 

Facebook.com/WayfaringBooksellers