"What's significant about this isn't that Stefani hand-sold my book, or that any indie bookstore did. It's more the fact that customers at an indie bookstore trust the booksellers."–Cathy Salustri, author of Backroads of Paradise: A Journey to Rediscover Old Florida 

Last week the iconic Tampa, FL bookstore Inkwood Books announced that it would be closing at the end of March. The news prompted an outpouring of community support, ranging from grief to "good luck for the future" to some truly original emoticons.

It also, as such things are wont to do, prompted many people to share their memories and feelings of why the long-standing independent bookstore was so important in their lives.  "As a literary and Florida writer, Inkwood is one of the main reasons anyone ever read a Connie May Fowler book," wrote none other than Connie May Fowler herself.  "Working there inspired my husband and I to open my own bookstore" wrote a former staff member.  "You guys were my daughter's first bookstore" said someone else. The columnist Cathy Salustri wrote an extended and heartfelt tribute to the store in the Tampa edition of Creative Loafing, recounting her journey into the wide weird world of promoting her first book with Inkwood's owner Stefani Beddingfield as a willing and generous guide. "What's significant about this," she sums up, "isn't that Stefani hand-sold my book, or that any indie bookstore did. It's more the fact that customers at an indie bookstore trust the booksellers."