Looking for independent bookstores to visit in Portland, Maine? This article features five cozy Portland bookstores to check out!
You can’t avoid books set in Maine. Portland writers may dream up fantasy lands and smaller-than-small towns, but Maine’s there, sure as waves crashing the coast.
If you’re looking for books to curl up with on cold, snowy days (Portland has a lot of those), head into one of the city’s independent bookshops. Portland bookstores are generalists, but they love locality, stocking Maine-set mysteries, poetry, biographies, and autobiographies.
Back Cove Books
Back Cove is Portland’s newest bookstore. It’s on the corner of Woodford Street and Forest Avenue, in a vee-shaped building that once housed a bank, a fact revealed through Back Cove’s vault-positioned nonfiction section.
Shelves fence the interior; wall corners are covered, displaying titles face-front like trophies. In between are wooden tabletops and spaces to linger.
Work In Progress (WIP) hosts a Wednesday-weekly knitting night here. Book launches, writing sessions, and poetry-vocal evenings are also part of Back Cove’s lineup.
The Kid’s Corner has a large collection of children’s books. Nonfiction for young readers is centered around a sketch of whales and coral. Peaks Island resident Catherynne M. Valente’s modern fairytale, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making, is nestled amongst a wave of middle grades.
General Info
ADDRESS: 651 Forest Ave Ste 1, Portland, ME 04101
Print opened less than a decade ago too, but it’s quickly become one of the most-loved bookstores in Portland. Print is a big block of a shop that creates little nooks through perpendicular shelves. Bookcases act as barriers, closing up sections just enough for you to feel like a genre truly surrounds you.
Emily Russo and Josh Christie’s store sells new releases, YA, horror, zines, and cookbooks. You’ll also find various independently published titles emerging from Levine Querido, Graywolf, and Pushkin Press.
General Info
ADDRESS: 273 Congress St, Portland, ME 04101
Sherman’s Maine Coast Bookshop
Press your face to Sherman’s Maine Coast Bookshop’s window, near teeth-white text that reads “Maine’s Oldest Bookstore,” and you’ll see past a Jenga stack of tabletops hosting face-front novels. Look closer, and you’ll notice two long lines of shelves that seem to extend forever. From outside, it’s hard to tell there’s another room filled with novels, that some titles jut past the edges of bargain boxes, and floppy paperback mysteries lie in a section categorized “Maine Mysteries & Marine.”
The sun glares, so you have to go into Sherman’s. The shop’s awning gives you the green light; a chalkboard confirms, “You deserve another book.”
Sherman’s is one of the best bookstores in Portland for locally written books (which is saying something because most Portland bookshops highlight local authors). Books are set in Acadia woodlands, small-town queer Hallowell, oyster-haven Damariscotta, and Portland (of course, Portland).
General Info
ADDRESS: 49 Exchange St, Portland, ME 04101
Read Next: Where To Stay In Portland, Maine
Carlson & Turner Antiquarian
Used books are time machines. Spin their clocks back far enough, and you find yourself in a place, a moment, a history. As pages fade from wall-white to cream to tan, books develop a mature, transportive power.
No shop understands this better than Carlson & Turner, an antiquarian bookstore where titles are so old the inventory feels like a Portland-sized protest against ageism. Carlson & Turner proudly shelves books with pinched spines and wearing joints and strained headbands. There’s a reverence granted to these books (the shop even functions as a bindery, gently reviving and fastening memories).
General Info
ADDRESS: 241 Congress St, Portland, ME 04101
Longfellow Books
When you visit Longfellow Books, promise me this: you’ll sift through their staff picks. Longfellow is known for being one of the best bookstores in Portland, with both new and used books. But don’t come for the deals; come to be dealt niche, in-the-know book recs. Longfellow’s staff pick cards feel like postcards from friends. Their inserts and shelf talkers are delightfully unrestrained love letters to underrated stories and prose.
General Info
ADDRESS: One Monument Way, Portland, ME 04101
How To Support These Bookstores
📚 Bookshop.org: Bookshop.org is an Amazon alternative that raises money for independent bookstores (this is the website we personally use to buy books online).
🎧 Libro.fm: Love audiobooks? Libro.fm, an Audible alternative, uplifts indie bookshops! Select a bookstore, search for an audiobook, and support an indie bookshop through your purchase. Libro.fm’s monthly membership (the plan we have) profit shares with local bookstores, giving back to communities. If you use the code CHOOSEINDIE, you get a bonus audiobook!
📅 Attend Events: Many bookstores frequently host events like author talks, signings, pop-ups, and book clubs! Be sure to check a bookshop’s events calendar (or follow them on social media) to find fun bookish activities!
More Bookstores In Portland, Maine
- Green Hand Bookshop: Michelle Souliere’s handpicked selection of used books (lots of sci-fi and horror picks)
- Novel: a cocktail bar where you can read, lounge, grab a drink (or coffee), and buy a book (sourced from Green Hand Bookshop)
Which of these Portland bookshops would you visit? What are your favorite bookstores in Portland? Let me know in the comments below!
