The Rogue Bookshop will open next month at 321 State St. in Beloit, Wis. Owner Jamie Anderson has planned a pre-opening party for July 10, with the grand opening slated for July 12, the Beloit Daily News reported.
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| Jamie Anderson | |
"I started really looking for a place to open a bookstore about a year ago," she said. "We have these younger generations who are not into buying from Amazon. They're supporting local stores, and putting their money in meaningful places, and picking up books again to get away from the screen. It felt like a really good time to take advantage of that and bring an independent bookstore to an area that didn't have one."
While her children were growing up, Anderson worked as a legal assistant for the public defender’s office in Madison. After they reached high school age, she decided to go back to school, earning a degree in communications and media studies from the University of Wisconsin in 2022. Although she briefly considered going into publishing, in 2024 she noticed a job advertisement for a part-time bookseller at Lake City Books in Madison.
"I thought it was going to just be a fun gig while I kept trying to figure out what to do," she recalled. But the store owner got Covid and Anderson found herself running the store temporarily. "And I was like, 'Oh my gosh, I love this. This is what I want to do.' "
She began looking for a city that would welcome a bookstore. "I wasn't originally looking at Beloit, but Beloit has this charm, so I reached out to some city officials and the Downtown Beloit Association," Anderson said. "They gave me the name and number to the owner of this building... and everything just worked out."
Noting that she spent enough time at Lake City Books and other indies in Madison to know that having books for sale is only part of the equation, Anderson said, "You have to make connections with the community and think outside the box.... I want it to be more than a retail store. I want it to be a place where we can have events and build a sense of community."