What is it about the image of a bookstore that you want to achieve? A community hub where people come to talk to you about books? Where you can engage writers?
You don't need to open a brick and mortar bookstore for that if you don't want everything that comes with being a shop owner who has to maintain an enormous amount of stock, where you will have to spend an inordinate amount of time talking to boring people about truly terrible books.
You could limit your hours, do the fun stuff, let others do the boring stuff. Plus you'd maximize the positive impact on the other local businesses instead of diluting their traffic.
I think there's a lot of wisdom in these comments, but I'm not sure if being a literary-event-organizer (or whatever you might call it) is the part of this I'm really drawn to. I kind of think I want to be the shop owner "maintaining the stock", doing the "boring stuff".
When I think about a pop-up shop, or organizing literary events in other community spaces, it sounds...okay. But the thing I dream about is a bookstore with narrow aisles and high shelves, packed with a hundred lifetimes worth of good books waiting to be read. Now, am I just in love with the daydream, and not the reality? Very possibly.
This is all super helpful conversation.
Then I strongly, STRONGLY recommend that you put in some time working retail at a book store. If that's not possible, then any kind of retail will do, and be very eye opening.
You talk about wanting to spend your days among books, but that's not at all what retail is about. Retail is about sales, merchandising, and engaging your community.
It's also largely about talking to annoying people about things that you think are stupid.
I mean, there's no way you love books in general, there are A LOT of shit books out there, and a lot of that shit will make up a huge proportion of your demand. You can't just carry the books you like, and you also need to be able to market and promote the books you don't like.
This means you need to be up on the latest book trends, know which shit books are hot right now so that you know what and how much to order.
Examine your love of "books" and figure out what it actually means to you. No one universally loves books, that's just nonsense. People like the books they like. I love books, but would probably rather poke my own eyes out than read 90% of them.
However, if what you are passionate about is *reading* and engaging the people in your community to love reading, then that motivation fits, but that's also where it would also make sense to be motivated to do community engagement activities and events.
So I'm having a really hard time resolving what it is you actually want from the concept of opening a brick and mortar retail store. I can firmly tell you this: retail is 90% dealing with customers and 10% about what you are actually selling.
I'm really not trying to burst your bubble, I'm just not getting from you an indication that you would actually enjoy the reality of owning a store, and it's a huge investment that can very very easily be lost when there's that much inventory involved.
Maybe this is the right move for you, but definitely flesh out the vision, deconstruct the motivations behind it, and make sure that the actual outcome aligns with your goals.
Otherwise, you could accidentally end up buying yourself a stressful and demanding career that you hate and can't just walk away from.
Try retail, try volunteering at the library, try running a book club, try organizing a book reading at a local venue. Try all of these things, figure out what you love and what you hate, and then craft your best plan from there.