It's been a long road for Anne and Phil Haisley, the couple that opened Books Inc. and the Book Lover's Cafe in Northwest Gainesville in 1989. Anne says friends who were pregnant used to come to the book store and the babies became like family.
"And then they were born," she remembers. "And then their mothers brought them in for us to see them, and then they got their first books here, and then they learned to read here, sitting on the couch over there."
But the Haisleys announced that they, too, will be moving on. They're not the first book store, local or corporate, to close their doors. Many stores have been shutting down because of declining sales with so many new ways to buy books or read them online.
Steve Kirn is the Executive Director of the Miller Center for Retail Education. He put it this way:
"It's going to essentially replace books. [That is] clearly where things are heading. All you have to do is look at Borders."
Borders is just one store to shut down after declining sales. But the Haisleys say that's not why they're leaving the store behind.
"We're getting older," says Anne. "And we realized that it wasn't very realistic to wait for a grand child who is 10 to get old enough to come and take over."
They anticipate closing the store sometime next year and then taking time off to travel.