An Indie Bookstore for Birders Is a Dream Come True

One morning in April 2024, a tractor trailer holding 5,500 books parked beside a low stucco constructing in California. Ready inside amongst empty cabinets and used furnishings, Lyzy Lusterman discovered herself in shadow, excited however questioning what she’d gotten herself into. 

Till then, Lusterman had been immersed within the music world as a pianist and writer of specialised magazines corresponding to Ukulele and Acoustic Guitar. Now she was the brand new proprietor of Buteo Books, the nation’s largest bookseller targeted on birds. “I consider myself as a realistic, risk-averse particular person,” Lusterman says. Launching into one other area of interest enterprise whereas utilizing financial savings to open the model’s first bodily location? This appeared something however. 

She’d purchased Buteo Books to understand a childhood fantasy. Six months earlier, she’d seen an advert in Dwelling Hen journal that learn, “Have You At all times Dreamed of Proudly owning a Bookstore?” The reply was sure.  

As a child, Lusterman cherished the liberty of visiting native bookshops, the place adults welcomed her to browse and skim for so long as she wished. Her avian ardour arrived later. Whereas she’d grown up amid the towering redwoods and rugged coasts of California’s Marin County, birds didn’t catch her eye till the pandemic. On lengthy walks alongside San Francisco Bay, she started observing shorebirds like American Avocets and Black-necked Stilts and have become hooked. Quickly, she realized there was a area people of obsessed birders.  

Since taking on Buteo Books, Lusterman has used her publishing and advertising and marketing expertise to faucet into that subculture. She’s expanded the company’s online presence and created a welcoming bodily area, open 4 days every week in San Rafael. “It’s a distinct segment that was ready to be stuffed,” says Jane Medley, a member of Marin Audubon Society who commonly visits for retailer occasions with authors, scientists, and photographers. “She’s constructing a neighborhood.” 

She’s solely the most recent passionate proprietor to depart an imprint on the enterprise. Ornithologist Byron Harrell, the primary president of the Raptor Analysis Basis, and his spouse, Joyce, based Buteo Books in 1971. At a convention in Europe, they noticed a bookseller hawking avian titles and determined to convey the enterprise mannequin again dwelling to South Dakota. At first, they supplied a handwritten catalog of fifty titles, with a deal with raptor reads (because the identify “Buteo” suggests). They slowly grew the enterprise, taking mail or cellphone orders for brand new books and publishing just a few of their very own.

Allen Hale, an avid birder in Virginia, took over 20 years later. By day he was a land surveyor—an excellent occupation, he says, for watching wildlife on the job. As proprietor, he constructed Buteo Books’ trove of uncommon, out-of-print, and antiquarian titles. Accumulating books, in spite of everything, isn’t in contrast to including species to a life record. He loved introducing his favourite nature author, Peter Matthiessen, to prospects. “I’ve ­just about each ebook he wrote,” Hale says.  
 

In 1998, Hale employed an worker who would form Buteo Books’ future. Not solely did Jamie Hale create the corporate’s first database and launch it into on-line promoting, however she additionally met and married Allen’s son, Jeremy. The pair took the reins in 2013, transferring the gathering from Allen’s basement right into a four-story warehouse they’d bought. Boosted by surging curiosity in birding, the enterprise had its finest 12 months ever in 2021, transport 28 books a day on common. However the couple additionally ran different companies from the power and felt stretched skinny. They put Buteo Books up on the market in 2022, hoping to see it stay on. A 12 months later,  as doubt started to set in, Lusterman wrote to them. 

Below Lusterman, the corporate’s household custom has continued. For years, Lyzy had labored together with her father, David, and brother, Joey, at Stringletter, the music journal firm that David began within the Eighties. Nowadays, the household has additionally embraced Buteo Books: David helped arrange the shop; Joey proofreads newsletters; and Lyzy’s mom, Kathryn, works there, advising prospects on native birding spots and native crops, a ardour of hers.  

Lyzy herself has leaned into curating the shop’s choices. She significantly enjoys buying titles from personal collections, discovering “valuable treasures” within the type of bookmarks or marginalia, and discovering prospects who might cherish the books anew. “There’s one thing good about figuring out that different folks held a ebook and skim it earlier than you,” she says. “It’s a reminder that tales and information reside issues.” Her common emails highlight new arrivals, older favorites, and neighborhood notes, corresponding to a buyer who constructed a Chimney Swift tower, whereas the “Buteo Curio” e-newsletter gives updates on rare, collectible, finely bound, and illustrated finds. 

She hopes this care units Buteo Books other than platforms like Amazon or the whims of some algorithm. However she is clear-eyed in regards to the monetary challenges. In two years, she’s turn out to be aware of the seasons of bookselling—the vacation excessive, the lull that follows. Nonetheless, she thinks enterprise is transferring in the appropriate route. Publication subscribers, a driver of on-line orders, have greater than doubled from these she inherited. And although most gross sales are on-line, in-person income is ticking up because the Bay Space’s birding neighborhood learns in regards to the retailer.  

Just like the Harrells and Hales earlier than her, she has additionally gone on the street, promoting at regional occasions. She’d love to do extra—the problem is staying affected person. In any case, an excellent impartial bookstore wasn’t inbuilt a day.

Formative Reads

Lusterman says these books have formed her understanding of birds and nature. She’s all the time restocking them.

• The Peregrine: J.A. Baker’s 1967 traditional follows the lives of two falcons, providing “new and pressing” perception with every studying.
• The Birds of California: William Dawson’s writings stay contemporary and sharp, even after greater than 100 years.
• Birds of Point Reyes: This California shore is a favourite spot for a stroll. Keith Hansen’s illustrations convey its birds to life.
• The Serviceberry: By way of tales about reciprocity amongst crops, birds, and folks, Robin Wall Kimmerer invitations us to “think about what the world could possibly be.” Lusterman enjoys re-reading it on New 12 months’s Day.
• Raising Hare: Chloe Dalton’s poignant memoir reinforces Lusterman’s perception that “nature isn’t some distant place we go to go to, however is all the time right here the place we’re.”

This story initially ran within the Summer season 2026 difficulty as “New Chapter.” To obtain our print journal, turn out to be a member by making a donation today.