Jeffrey Scott Holland: Morris Book Shop
thrives by offering more intimate experience

By Jeffrey Scott Holland

In this modern age of corporate chain stores, Amazon, the E-book, am surprised that anyone even bothers to try making a go of running their own bookstore today.


But Han Solo’s dictum, “Never tell me the odds!” suits Lexington-born Wyn Morris perfectly. Not only is he holding his own against the Internet with his indie brick-and-mortar Morris Book Shop, he’s thriving. He opened the shop in 2008 at its current Southland Drive location, and quickly established a reputation as the place to go for Fayette County book lovers seeking a smaller, personal, more intimate experience than one might find in a Borders or a Barnes & Noble.

That’s not to say that Morris’ store is the literary equivalent of a mom and pop grocery — their catalog is deep, and they seem to have a knack for knowing what in-demand items to carry in stock that you would have to place a special order for elsewhere. They continually keep up a solid pace of events with readings and book-signings by national and local authors (and that has included, I should mention in the interest of full disclosure, myself).



Morris, who graduated UK majoring in telecommunications, wasn’t quite sure what his direction would be when he entered the real world. The very definition of what “telecommunications” meant had drastically altered over the course of his college years, and his initial enthusiasm about a career in radio began to wane when he realized the radio industry was changing fast — and not to his liking.

After some years working for Joseph-Beth Booksellers, University Press of Kentucky, Cut Corner Records, and UK’s alternative radio station WRFL-FM, Morris decided it was time to become his own boss and start his own bookstore. Around this same time, he also helped found Local First Lexington, a non-profit alliance of locally owned, independently operated businesses.

Morris’ first reading material as a child was usually Harvey comics like Richie Rich, obtained at the old Wheeler’s Pharmacy on Romany Road. Later in life, after graduating from Henry Clay High School, he got into Stephen King and Clive Barker, and his taste in comics upgraded to DC graphic novels, Daniel Clowes’ Eightball, and Peter Bagge’s Hate. Nowadays, Morris says, “what I mostly read is pulp-genre sort of stuff,” and he can usually be found at home “sitting on the porch reading Richard Stark” with his wife Vicki and two sons.

What does the future hold for Morris and his venture? Great expansion. This week, it’s been announced that in September they’ll be moving to a bigger and better location at 882 East High Street (the former Hubbuch & Co. building) in Chevy Chase. With the help of his store manager and fellow WRFL refugee Hap Houlihan, Morris hopes to have everything packed over in just two days, although he allowed that timetable just might be a tad on the ambitious side. The new digs will carry about the same amount of inventory at first, using the increased square footage to give some “breathing room” to customers and to better display what they already have.

This transplanting brings Morris into a grand tradition the general area has had historically with independent bookstores, as will be professed by anyone who fondly remembers Chevy Chase Used Bookstore, the Owl and the Pussycat, Woodland Park Bookstore, Starlen Baxter and Phil Francis’ Hypnotic Eye, and Tony Briggs’ Book Shoppe. Two other used bookstores, Unique Books and Black Swan, still operate nearby.

A date for their grand re-opening has yet to be determined, but keep your eye here on KyForward and we’ll keep you informed!

Jeffrey Scott Holland is a native Kentuckian, painter, writer, actor, musician, paralegal – and interested in all things. He joins a growing stable of talented, interesting regular columnists for KyForward.com, bringing his gift of a well-turned phrase, quirkiness and humor to entertain and enlighten — and sometimes provoke — our readers. He can always be reached at any time, by anyone on the planet, at jshpaint@gmail.com.

Slideshow of photos from Morris Book Shop below. Photo above of Wyn Morris.