UPDATE: Portsmouth's RiverRun Bookstore Reopens

UPDATED 11:15 a.m.

RiverRun is now open for business at its new Portsmouth location at 142 Fleet St.

"We are open!!" read a Tweet from the business around 11 a.m. this morning.

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Portsmouth's RiverRun Bookstore, which nearly closed , will reopen at a new downtown location in that city today.

Co-owner and general manager Tom Holbrook, one of his employees and a volunteer were hard at work this week getting their new store ready for its reopening on Friday morning.

RiverRun was opened in 2002 by Holbrook and Exeter's Dan Chartrand, owner of .

RiverRun is now owned by 14 people who chose to invest in the business after it accrued some heavy debt and was forced to close in December as the new business model was being created. Thanks to its robust following of loyal customers, Holbrook was able to reopen the store at its new location on Fleet Street.

Below is a Q&A with Holbrook:

What separates this business from others?: Independent book stores really focus on selling books that they’re passionate about. And each one is different because they are connected to the community whereas national book stores are more interested in selling as much stuff as possible. I think people can come into the store and feel there are books that we truly care about.

What do you like about doing business in Portsmouth?: It’s an intelligent, well read community that is interested in talking about ideas. We also enjoy selling the types of books that people in this community enjoy reading.

How do you give back to the community?: We do over 100 author events per year, which are very popular in the community. We also sell discounted books to the schools and we work with local book groups.

What are your future goals?: We’re going to keep focusing on the best books we can find and I think in the future that will mean a lot of smaller publishers, which will be the next wave. It’s an opportunity for us to connect more with smaller publishers that are similar in spirit to us and we are going to be looking to do some publishing ourselves.

How would you describe the new RiverRun Bookstore?: When I was the sole owner of the store, I was oriented to the community, but now we are truly a book store that belongs to the community. One hundred and sixty people showed up on a freezing cold day to move books. Thirteen people in the community stepped up to join the new ownership group. It moves us from a store that I own and I like to one where people have an invested interest in it and that is what it takes to build community.

What can other small businesses learn from RiverRun Bookstore?: It serves as a model for businesses that want to change the way they are financed, but it also serves as a model for new businesses that would want a model of crowd funding where a large number of people invest a small amount of money to make something happen.

Why will RiverRun Bookstore succeed?: The independent book store model has been pretty durable and for the ones that have the right plan in place they have come through this recession pretty well even with the growth in sales of digital books.