When Nashville lost its last two local bookstores, novelist Ann Patchett decided to open her own. The Atlantic has a wonderful (and long) article that she wrote about the project:
If I wanted to re-create that kind of bookstore, one that valued books and readers above muffins and adorable plastic watering cans, a store that recognized it could not possibly stock every single book that every single person might be looking for, and so stocked the books the staff had read and liked and could recommend — if I wanted to re-create the bookish happiness of my childhood, then maybe I was the person for the job.
