Scott VanKoughnett inside Eat My Words bookstore’s new location at 201 6th St. SE. (Mark Peterson)
Eat My Words, a bookstore which spent its first three years at 1228 2nd St. NE and another eight years at 214 13th Ave. NE, has relocated again.
Its new location, at 201 6th St. SE, opened on August 1. The store introduced itself to the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood with an event on August 16 with music and a poetry reading.
The new store is in a two-story edifice called the Telephone Building, which was built in 1902 as one of Northwestern Bell’s phone exchanges. The interior brick walls and 20-foot ceilings are a big change from the more modest space at 13th Avenue, and the floor space is 2500 square feet — a 35% increase.
Eat My Words owner Scott VanKoughnett said the new space, with its renovation and historic pedigree, is “prettier and classier.” The event space and foot traffic appear to be about the same. He added that parking space may be a bit better and the store may benefit from the greater number of retail spaces in the neighborhood.
“Even though we aren’t technically in Northeast anymore — by a few steps — we are still the only used-book store in Northeast. We are generalists, as opposed to stores that specialize in one genre, and we have a wide selection in almost all categories. We have some antiquarian books and oddities but also plain reading copies.”
The Telephone Building houses the bookstore and a few other businesses. (Mark Peterson)
He said his 25,000-book inventory has come from estate sales, Hennepin County Library sales and, especially now that he’s an established buyer, people bringing in books or inviting him to visit houses full of books. Some books are available because of downsizing or other relocations, and many are due to the death of a relative.
In a 2021 interview, VanKoughnett said he has always been passionate about books. “I started reading, apparently when I was three or four, and my mother says she doesn’t know how I learned, because she didn’t teach me. And I even had a great aunt who owned a bookstore in Chicago. I’ve been reading ever since, and wanted to open a bookstore since I was maybe 30, and I’m 70 now. I finally got myself in a position where I could do it.” Asked for his favorite part of the business, he said it was finding books and matching them up with people, especially if he could find them a book they didn’t know existed “but that turned out to be a perfect fit.”
Asked if people know where the new store is, he said, “we emailed people our lists; we put a sign in our old store window; we changed the listing on our website and Google and Apple Maps. So I hope so, and they can always call us. One of the good things about the internet is that we can put things all over the place to help people find us.”
In addition to liking the new space’s high ceilings, VanKoughnett said he likes a room in the back where they put the old and rare books — previously, they were stacked around the front desk. “We wanted to a separate space that really does feature them.”
