On a sunny midmorning in May, Beanchain Coffee in Mesa was overflowing with dozens of visitors. While some were there solely for caffeinated drinks and sweet pastries, there was something else there that drew a crowd: books.
As the host of The Girlhood Co.’s Spring Book Market, the cafe set up an indoor market of local authors and vendors selling their books and book-related items. However, some would say the main attraction was just outside where three mobile bookstores had set up to welcome customers.
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Ever since the pandemic, independent bookstores have experienced a resurgence across the country. In the past five years the number of independent bookstores in the U.S. has exploded by 70%, according to a report released by the American Booksellers Association. In 2025 alone, 605 new bookstores opened across the country; 77 of those happen to be on wheels.
Mobile bookstores are just what they sound like. Trucks , trailers or U-hauls that have been converted into on-the-go bookshops that can be found at markets, festivals and even other local brick-and-mortar businesses. Full of as much style as literature, these bookstores have been multiplying across the Valley for the past two years.
“This is so fun for me, you know, to have this experience and connect with my community through culture and literacy and books,” said Nancy Jenner, owner of the What’s Your Story mobile bookstore. “Amazon is great. We can all buy any of these books on Amazon but look at how we’re connecting. People are getting out and we’re talking to each other and smiling at each other again.”
What’s Your Story joins Phoenix’s convoy of bookmobiles
In the shade just outside the cafe doors a tiny crowd gathered next to a small blue truck where they can find two things: books and daisies. At the What’s Your Story mobile bookstore, books were gathered on a green bookshelf carrying titles like “Last Night in Brooklyn” and “Vigil.” The daisies are more spread out — painted on the side of the truck itself, made into an “instagrammable” art installation that customers can take photos with and printed on the navy shirt worn by Jenner.
A smile spread on her face as she checked out a customer, pausing for a moment to let them know the book they’ve chosen is a sequel and not a standalone novel. “So, you’re going in the right order? I want to make sure; that’s my responsibility.”
Jenner has been an avid reader since she was a young child. After years as a single mother, Jenner found herself with a lot more time on her hands once her daughter became adult. She opted to fill her time with “luxury reading” but yearned to do more.
While the idea of owning a bookstore had always lived inside of her, Jenner said that it wasn’t until last August that she had the idea to open a mobile one.
By February, she’d invested in a truck. By March, she was on the road.
May’s Mesa market was the largest event she’d taken part in and the farthest she’d driven the truck. Most days her store can be seen around downtown Phoenix near her home, appearing at markets and in front of cafes and storefronts like Proof Bread and Songbird Coffeehouse. She says the decision to stick to her neighborhood has helped her build a regular customer base as well as connect with local businesses that want to see others succeed.
“If I never left a two-mile radius, I could be on a different coffee shop patio every day,” Jenner said.
Still she ventured beyond her regular zone to attend the Mesa market, remarking that she had to take the streets the entire way since her truck can only go 55 miles per hour with its setup.
For a crowd this big, Jenner brought her stepmother from out of town and her daughter Selina Homily, who also helped her set up the truck’s social media page. However, Jenner says she mainly runs What’s Your Story as a solo operation.
“I have to be able to set it up, tear it down, drive it, stock it, clean it, service it on my own,” she said.
Despite working as a solo operation, Jenner said that she has found a very welcoming community in her fellow bookmobile owners, including two who were at the market with her.
At the start of a rolling trend
Farther out from the coffee shop in the parking lot were The Lit Twist, owned by Petra Sherbin-Fox, and The Book Haul, owned by Traci Vopalensky.
Potential customers entering the Lit Twist are greeted by shelves filled with books by Black authors like Tia Williams and Kennedy Ryan. Flower garlands hang from the ceiling and past covers of Essence magazine are posted to the wall next to the register where Petra Sherbin-Fox checks out customers who exit through a side door covered in blackboard paint. For her, the bookstore’s interior isn’t just meant to be bright and cheerful. It’s meant to reflect the store’s goal of amplifying female authors of color.
“For me, it’s about more than just selling books,” she said. “When you’re intentional about sharing Black stories, there’s a level of activism in that.”
Sherbin-Fox celebrated the first anniversary of her mobile bookstore in January. She’s the only Black mobile bookstore owner in the metro Phoenix area and one of the first to appear on the scene back in 2025.
Sherbin-Fox said she initially wanted to open a brick-and-mortar bookstore but was put off by overhead costs and wanted something more flexible given that her husband was active duty in the military. In fact, he was the one who first suggested a mobile bookstore to her. Though it seemed like a decent compromise, Sherbin-Fox was still skeptical.
“I was adamantly against it,” she recalled. “I’m not getting no bookstore on wheels. I can barely drive a car!”
It took a little more convincing but in July 2024 she decided to go all in on the idea. Six months later The Lit Twist was active. It has since become one of the more popular mobile bookstores in the Valley with an in-person book club, reading retreat and official merch. As owner of the bookstore, Sherbin-Fox has a hand in every aspect of the growing business. Well, all except one.
“I don’t drive the trailer,” she said. For that she relies on her husband.
One aspect Sherbin-Fox was particularly proud of is the interior of her truck, which took months to create.
“My biggest concern was how am I going make it warm and vibey?” she said. “I was so nervous I wouldn’t be able to do it in a mobile bookstore but the one thing that mostly everybody says when they come is that they feel the warmth and love the aesthetic.”
Are bookmobiles strictly side hustle or a possible full-time career?
It’s not easy to make a converted hauling attachment feel like a real bookstore. Building out a truck is one of the bigger challenges with most owners striving to imbue their vehicles with as much personality as possible. Vopalensky spent months working on her mobile bookstore, The Book Haul. A full-time nurse practitioner, she would mostly tackle the project during weekends or after work, spending time installing a custom floor, ceiling, neon signage and painted Ikea bookcases.
“I would come home and I would build a shelf if I had the time, or then on weekends I would either come in to paint, sand, install.”
She described the work as a “labor of love.” Her efforts provided her trailer with a dark, moody atmosphere befitting the epic fantasy titles she carries and one her customers tend to love.
“This is me in a bookstore,” she said. “I wanted it to be a really great representation of what I am.”
Vopalensky first got serious about starting a mobile bookstore after speaking with a financial mentor who advised her to start her own business. So in early 2025, around the same time as The Lit Twist, she opened the Book Haul. Since then, her shop has made appearances at markets and events across the Valley. For her, the bookstore helps her be financially independent and provides an escape from her demanding career as a nurse.
“I think that’s what great about having my bookstore as an outlet because it’s something completely different than what I do for my daily nine-to-five,” Vopalensky said. “It takes my mind off of it and I get to share the joy of reading with other people.”
When asked if she’d ever consider making the Book Haul her full time job, she said while the thought has crossed her mind, the transition won’t happen any time soon.
“We’ll see what the future holds.”
While Vopalensky’s mobile bookstore serves as more of a side hustle, Joseph D. Newcomer sees his shop as an expansion of his pre-existing career.
Newcomer is an author and founder of Dead Star Press, a local publishing company specializing in sci-fi and speculative fiction. After a few years working the events circuit as a pop-up bookshop, he and his partner Andrea Greenwald officially launched their bookmobile in early May.
Newcomer said that while working as a pop-up was doable, he and Greenwald wanted to make things easier for themselves, especially during the summer months.
“We were going back and forth with all those books and breaking down the boxes and putting up the tents,” he said. “Basically we were doing events and I’m like, ‘We need to do this a better way.’”
After saving and raising a few thousand dollars through a GoFundMe campaign, they bought a used U-Haul truck and set to work transforming it into their bookstore. They managed to complete most of the project over a three-day weekend, staying up long into the night to install the floor, ceiling, insulation, air conditioning and more.
“Trying to give it a cohesive vibe, that was really where all the work was,” Newcomer said. “You want it to be complete. You want people to feel like they’re in a real bookstore, you know, and they are.”
Stocking it with used books, vintage finds, special editions as well as new titles, Newcomer has found having a wide selection makes it easier to introduce customers into his own work.
“People would see the books they know and we would say, ‘Oh well, if you like Chuck Palahniuk, you’ll like my book “Darkest Day”.’”
A growing literary community leans on one another
As someone who’s been in Phoenix’s literary community for years, Newcomer has noticed the increase in bookish events across the Valley as well as mobile bookstores.
“We would run into a bookmobile or a trailer or another little pop-up here and there,” he said. “But in the last year, it just blew up. I mean, they’re everywhere.”
Spurred on by a trending push toward analog living and physical media, the bookmobile craze shows no sign of stopping. In the last year, at least 10 new mobile bookstores hit the road across Arizona. And newcomers appear to be welcomed by veterans with open arms and a lot of advice.
“We all help each other,” Jenner said. “I don’t see any gatekeeping whatsoever.”
When Jenner was considering starting the What’s Your Story mobile bookstore, she reached out to Vopalensky and Sherbin-Fox for advice. Both were more than happy to help not just her but anyone else who reached out.
“It’s still a business,” Vopalensky said. “I don’t think people realize that there’s still the back end of it.”
According to the owners featured in this article, opening a bookmobile can cost at least five figures. It’s a significant number but a steep drop in cost from the six figures needed to open a brick-and-mortar shop. Quite a deal, considering it comes with access to a wealth of community knowledge and support.
It appears that when you start a mobile bookstore in Phoenix, you don’t just open a business. You join a convoy.
Most owners work their route with minimal help outside occasional appearances from their family. Therefore, they turn to each other for support. Meeting up at markets and keeping in touch over social media, they share tidbits about how to find books, which events they could be featured at, how to make repairs and more. Sometimes, they even help with parking each other’s trailers.
“Petra and Tracy are now friends of mine because I reached out to them when I said I want to do this and they were an integral part of my understanding of what this was like,” Jenner said. She said even their husbands have offered her advice about her truck. “Learning from all of them has been critical to me.”
Word of mouth has even extended beyond local borders to aspiring bookmobile owners in other states. Sherbin-Fox said she had a visitor travel from California to pick her brain about what it takes to open a mobile bookstore. She welcomes the opportunity to share her experience.
“I want to see all the bookstores, all of them in the Valley win — mobile, brick-and-mortar, pop-up,” Sherbin-Fox said. “It’s little old me. Imagine if I was the only bookmobile here forever.”
Reporting by TreNesha Striggles, Arizona Republic / Arizona Republic
