WHAT STARTED AS a dream quickly rolled into four wheels and the ultimate side hustle that gives back to the community in Local Books, a newly launched independent mobile bookstore from Ryan Fields and Charlene Cruz.
For Fields, the inspiration for Local Books came from a young age.
“When I was younger, my grandmother was an avid reader. She had a stroke when I was a kid, and I only knew her when I went to assisted care living to visit. She rarely had access to new books, and that’s something that we initially thought we could be in service of to the community. We wanted to visit these different locations, like an assisted care facility or somewhere they can’t get to a bookstore. … Going to these different events and places where you wouldn’t normally find a bookstore, we wanted to be that outlet and bring it to the community,” he says.
Before they took to the road, they researched other businesses on wheels and began to spawn the idea of how their own mobile bookstore would manifest. After importing a 1999 Daihatsu Hijet truck, Fields and his partner worked with Traders Point upfitting company, Off Grid Outfitters, as they began the work on what would become Local Books.
After Fields finished the interior work of the truck, their idea quickly came into fruition as they looked to utilize their business as a means of shifting focus toward authors throughout Indiana and the Midwest.
“We always thought the Midwest had a very rich literary scene,” Fields says. “They don’t get the spotlight because you have so many authors from the East or West Coast. We wanted to champion those unheard voices. Since we’re such a small shop, we had the ability to focus on a smaller subset of the literary market.”
From household names such as John Green and Kurt Vonnegut to more locally known writers like Leah Johnson, Edward Fujawa, and Arriel Vinson, among others, Local Books is propping up Hoosier authors with each mile they drive.
In their first excursion on the road, they took part in the Indy Indie Book Crawl at The Stutz, where they were met with resounding success.
“It was a great experience,” Fields says. “It was a little overwhelming just because of the number of people that turned out, but it was an important learning atmosphere for us when it came to understanding what people look for in a bookstore. By the end of the weekend, we had about 15 books left out of the hundreds that we brought with us. That was worrisome at the end when wondering if we brought enough, but it was also great to see that there is such a thriving literary community in the area.”
Local Books has future appearances planned at the Carmel Japan SpringFest on May 3 as well as the Indy Foodees Fest at Castleton Square in September. But in the interim, Fields and Cruz will soon release a booking app on their website that allows customers to schedule the truck for a date, time, and event when they would like Local Books to appear.
