Family Owned

An Independant Episcopal Bookstore

Nancy and John Marshall, husband and wife, are co-owners and managers of the Episcopal Bookstore. We purchased the Episcopal Bookstore in 1992 from its previous owner. For more information on our store, and the titles we carry, please see our About Us page.

The ministry-which-is-the-store is open six days a week and one of us is here each of those days.  We take two days off, Sundays when the store is closed (but the website is always open), and one other day each - one of us on Fridays and the other on Mondays.

Among other bookstore duties, the website and training the staff are John’s responsibilities. Nancy places orders and pays the bills along with the other usual activities of a retail store. We hire a few, hand-picked employees and pay them for their work. Because they are paid, they make it their responsibility to learn as much as they can about our customers and our merchandise. They are each very dependable and we admire their dedication to this ministry.

Any one of us will answer the phone. Nancy and John usually allow the staff to answer it first, but by the third ring usually one of us is grabbing for it so that you will not be kept waiting. We are strong advocates of local independent retail stores. We choose to shop similar stores in our area instead of the big box, multi-national chains because we know that where we shop makes a big difference to the health of the whole community. 

                        Next to the mural on our south wall, Julie, Joe, Daniel, John, Nancy, Holly
                                                                    September 2011

Who Decides What Books Are Offered?

Usually the “big guys” determine which items are displayed and where to display them by the amount of money they receive from the publishers and producers of the merchandise. We do it differently.

Nancy is our buyer. She chooses the titles and merchandise that we offer, not by how much the producer is willing to pay us to display it, but based on the quality of the item and whether it fits the theology of this ministry-which-is-the-store. John displays the items on our website, with suggestions from Nancy, by our judgment of what is good and appropriate at the time. As avid readers, John & Nancy have also featured a section of suggested "picks" to consider, John & Nancy's Picks are featured right on our homepage for easy access.

Many of our customers trust and rely on Nancy’s buying decisions and gain confidence in the merchandise that they are considering by knowing the motivations behind our decisions. We are always open to suggestions, if you know of a quality book that we are missing; please don’t hesitate to let us know.