A Great Good Place for Books shut its Montclair doors for good on Sunday, June 14, after 29 years. The same month, the East Bay counts four independent bookstores that have opened or reopened since late 2023.

The last day at A Great Good Place for Books is Sunday, June 14. Owner Kathleen Caldwell is closing the 6120 La Salle Ave storefront in Montclair after 29 years, citing a foot-traffic collapse that outlasted the pandemic and a December 2025 holiday season she described as the worst since 2008. Oakland's Montclair Village loses the bookstore it has had since 1997.

The "indie bookstores are dying" framing finds easy material here. It also misses what's been happening elsewhere in the East Bay.

Since December 2023, four independent bookstores have opened or reopened across Oakland and Berkeley. Clio's Bookshop arrived at 353 Grand Ave in Adams Point on New Year's Eve 2023 — around 10,000 volumes arranged chronologically by history of ideas, an organizational logic you won't find anywhere else. Tally Ho! Books opened in 2024 at 3941 Piedmont Ave, in the former Owl & Co. space on the Piedmont corridor, co-owned by Lilah Hinde and Bianca Salaverry, both former Pegasus Books Oakland staff. Book Society opened December 7, 2024 in Berkeley's Elmwood district — a wine bar and bookshop combination in an Art Deco interior. And Nomadic Bookshop arrived January 17, 2026, at 326 23rd St in Uptown Oakland, co-founded by J.K. Fowler, formerly the executive director of the Bay Area Book Festival; the grand opening drew around 400 people.

East Bay Booksellers at 6022 College Ave — a Publishers Weekly Bookstore of the Year 2025 finalist — also reopened November 29, 2024, after a fire destroyed its original space the prior July. It came back smaller, roughly half its prior footprint, but it came back.

Set alongside those openings, the older stores hold their corners. Walden Pond Books has occupied 3316 Grand Ave in Grand Lake since 1973. Marcus Books, at 3900 MLK Jr Way, has been at that Oakland address since 1976 — the nation's oldest Black-owned independent bookstore. Moe's Books has held 2476 Telegraph in Berkeley since 1959, four floors and more than 200,000 titles. Pegasus Books runs three East Bay locations. Mrs. Dalloway's has kept 2904 College Ave in Berkeley.

What the full landscape shows isn't a steady decline so much as a churn — stores closing for real, specific reasons (foot traffic, parking, a slow Christmas), and other stores opening with owners who know exactly the odds. The 6120 La Salle Ave storefront in Montclair will sit empty tomorrow. The storefront at 326 23rd St in Uptown, open since January, will not.