![\"Paperbound](\"https:\/\/www.ewu.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2026\/01\/Bookstore-10-copy-300x200.jpg\")
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Once upon a time<\/strong>, not so very long ago, the Nashville-based author turned bookseller Ann Patchett was asked why she was so passionate about bookstores. \u201cI think a big component of loving books is the desire to share them and to talk about them and to recommend them to other people,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have to take responsibility for the places where this happens, not wait for them to go away and then miss them terribly.\u201d<\/p>\n For many years, Cheney has been missing such a place, and terribly.<\/p>\n No longer. Hidden away behind 1st Street\u2019s Mason Jar restaurant, Paperbound Books is a tiny, impossibly cute gathering place for readers. It\u2019s proprietor, Kate MacDonald, 25, is an Eastern undergraduate studying music technology. She runs the store pretty much on her own \u2014 a solitary labor of love that allows her to serve as content curator to a diverse clientele. \u201cBooks make people happy. You just have to match them with the right one,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Even as a little girl growing up in Idaho, MacDonald loved books. \u201cI had a 300-book, thrift-store collection by the time I was 12, and they were all alphabetized in a notebook,\u201d she says. The idea for Paperbound came after she moved from Spokane to Cheney and found herself lamenting the lack of a bookshop.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d always wanted to start something on my own,\u201d she says. \u201cI was like, \u2019Why can\u2019t I do something like that here?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n So MacDonald set to work. She typed, \u201cHow do you write a business plan?\u201d into Google, then honed a strategy with several local experts. Next she created a website and started amassing inventory, collecting tomes from wherever people were divesting themselves of used volumes. She started selling at pop-ups and the Cheney farmer\u2019s market, all the while keeping her eyes open for potential brick-and-mortar storefronts.<\/p>\n Her ambitions got a big boost from Douglas LaBar, the Mason Jar\u2019s owner, who told her his building had a great little space available. He then proceeded, with the help of his father-in-law, the building\u2019s owner, to personally complete Paperbound\u2019s charmingly bohemian build-out. \u201cWe just want a bookstore in here,\u201d LaBar told MacDonald. \u201cAnd this is going to be yours.\u201d<\/p>\n In spite of the challenges facing all booksellers these days, Paperbound has been a success. After recently celebrating the shop\u2019s one-year anniversary, MacDonald is optimistic that her many customers represent a resurgence of interest in the printed word. \u201cPeople stopped reading printed books for a really long time because of e-books, digital and social media, all of that,\u201d MacDonald says. \u201cBut I\u2019m confident that the pendulum is swinging back from digital media to physical objects. Especially with Gen Z, books are definitely back in style.\u201d<\/p>\n As are, she might have added, cozy places to connect with them.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An Eastern undergraduate brings bookselling back to Cheney.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":484,"featured_media":86433,"menu_order":0,"template":"","class_list":["post-86431","stories","type-stories","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","stories_categories-alumni-profiles","stories_tags-fall-winter-2025-26"],"acf":{"subheading":"","featured_image_format":"cover","display_byline":false,"display_featured_image":false,"display_date_published":false,"featured_video":"","Links":false,"Resources":false,"page_override_title":"","page_hide_sidebar":false,"page_enable_page_nav":false,"page_persona_bar_default_tab":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ewu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/stories\/86431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ewu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/stories"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ewu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/stories"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ewu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/484"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.ewu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/stories\/86431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86673,"href":"https:\/\/www.ewu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/stories\/86431\/revisions\/86673"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ewu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ewu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}