The story of American bookselling for most of the last thirty years was a story about how independents lose. First to the superstores, then to Amazon, then to the general collapse of anyone’s attention span.
Page 158 Books opened in Wake Forest in 2015 and has grown 15 to 20 percent a year.
That is not a rounding error. That is a business getting substantially bigger every single year in a category that was supposed to be finished.
Sue and Dave Lucey
Page 158 Books was founded by Sue and Dave Lucey. Sue is the one whose name is on the store email; both of them are constants in the reviews, where customers describe them as connected to the community in a way that goes beyond retail.
The original concept was straightforward: a cozy, curated bookstore for downtown Wake Forest. They took over a space that had previously housed Storytellers Bookstore and reworked the layout.
Ten years in, Sue’s favorite section is the children’s area, with its window nook and kid-sized table. Her stated reason is that it works on both generations at once, kids discovering something new while parents rediscover what they read at that age.
The move, and then the expansion
The store’s physical history is messier than the growth curve suggests.
Page 158 had to be out of its original space by May 1 of 2022. Rather than close, they took a temporary location at 317 E. Roosevelt Avenue, in the former Lulu’s Antiques, while a new 1,600-square-foot space was built out about two blocks away in the Renaissance Centre plaza. Dave Lucey used the interruption to plan a more thoughtful layout, since the previous store had been carved up by walls and stairwells.
Then in 2022 they went bigger. The Luceys purchased the 3,200-square-foot retail space next door, bringing the store to roughly 4,800 square feet total.
The reason was events. Dave Lucey has said the steady annual growth made the space constraint obvious: they had been forced to host author events and book clubs outside downtown, sometimes in Raleigh, because they had nowhere to put people. The expansion was financed with support from Fidelity Bank, a Wake Forest institution. Lucey framed the civic argument directly, saying that giving people more reasons to be in downtown Wake Forest contributes to economic growth.
The new space includes a stage, a full commercial kitchen, and more dedicated display space for things the store had wanted to do for a while, like Small Press of the Month and Local Authors sections. The beer and wine selection grew. A neighboring business donated a section of its old bar top.
It is not only a bookstore
This is where the independent case actually gets made.
The Lemon Tree Café operates inside Page 158, run by Stacey Moritz, serving lunch and grab-and-go dinners. Two small businesses sharing a building, each sending customers to the other.
The Wake Forest Listening Room shares the stage. Mike Allen started it in 2017 as performances in storefronts around town, ran more than 300 shows in the basement below Sugar Magnolia Café, and now uses the Page 158 space. There is live music on Friday nights.
The store runs book clubs across essentially every genre and age group, plus author events, writing workshops, story time for kids, and craft nights. A glance at their calendar in a given week frequently shows something scheduled five or six days out of seven, sometimes twice in a day. Some events run at the store and some at Norse Brewing down the block.
Once a year they host LitFest, which brings readers and writers together with author meet-and-greets, cocktails, trivia, and a silent auction. All proceeds go to New Kids on the Books, the nonprofit the store operates to get books into kids’ hands. They also run adult book fairs at local breweries.
What they actually stock
Around 5,000 titles on the shelves, new general-interest adult and children’s books, plus book-related gifts, PaperBlanks journals and datebooks, and locally made crafts.
They can order almost anything in print within a few days. They will also assemble a grab bag: you pick a dollar amount starting at $25, give them any guidelines you want, and they hand-select a surprise.
That last offer is the entire value proposition in miniature. Amazon can ship you a book faster. Amazon cannot have a conversation with you about what you have been reading and then pick something you would never have found.
The reviews return to this over and over. Customers describe asking for a recommendation and getting one that landed perfectly. One person said the staff introduced her to authors she had not known existed. Another described the owners recommending something she did not know she needed until she walked in.
The case for staying independent
Page 158 is not surviving on nostalgia. It is growing because it turned a retail store into infrastructure.
If you want to buy a book, you have options. If you want a place where your book club meets, your kid does story time, an author you like reads on a Thursday, there is a café attached, live music on Friday, and someone behind the counter who remembers what you liked last time, there is exactly one option in Wake Forest.
The Luceys built the second thing. The book sales follow.
Page 158 Books, 415 S. Brooks Street, Wake Forest. page158books.com