Twelve Points Book Company, a bookstore and bar coming to Terre Haute, Ind., later this fall, has debuted as a weekly pop-up store, the Tribune-Star reported.
Owner John Cannaday plans to host a grand opening for the store on Small Business Saturday in November. When the bricks-and-mortar store is open, it will sell predominantly new books in a range of genres, along with beer and wine sourced from local breweries and wineries. His goal is to create a space where patrons can "meet others, share ideas, have a drink and find that perfect book."
Until that opening, Cannaday will be setting up shop every Thursday at the Twelve Points Creators Market in Terre Haute. There he's selling mostly used books from his own personal collection, and each purchase at the pop-up will come with a bookmark that will entitle customers to a discounted drink during the store's grand opening.
Cannaday told the Tribune-Star that opening a bookstore of his own has "been a dream of mine since I was a kid. I’ve loved bookstores and I've been to bookstores all over the world. When I think about this space, I imagine Cheers and Shakespeare and Co. in Paris, just an amalgam of those two.”
Prior to opening Twelve Points Book Company, Cannaday was a travel nurse earlier in the pandemic and worked as an ER and ICE nurse in Denver, Colo., before that. He also worked in France, where he taught English. Not long ago Cannaday returned to Terre Haute to be closer to his family, and found that "Twelve Points is going places and I wanted to be a part of it."
The community, Cannaday noted, seems very excited about the forthcoming bookstore. When he posted about his plans on Facebook, it was viewed by 27,000 people in only 12 hours.