Andy Close
WARREN, Pa. – Located in the heart of downtown Warren at 227 Liberty St., Authors Books & Music is a true delight.
Its charm is matched only by its vast selection, and the origins of Mike and Shannon Yahn’s quaint store are fascinating.
“We’ve been in this location for about 14 years,” Mike Yahn explained. “We were around the corner for about seven years in a co-op with Allegheny Book Mart. We kind of branched out from there. We bit the bullet and went for it.”
And their collection began almost by chance.
“We started about 20-some years ago,” Yahn said. “My wife was in real estate and she was offered a house full of books and movie posters for $100. She said alright. Well, we went up there and found some great stuff, books, movie posters, and the like.”
So they decided to run with it. Initially, they sold the books online but ran into a bit of a snag.
“This was about the time eBay was really taking off,” Yahn said. “We started booksbybid.com and invested a ton of money into software and things like that. It turned out to be a little more than we could handle. It didn’t pan out like we wanted to, so we decided to sell the books ourselves. That’s when we started the co-op and kind of branched out from there.”
And the collection has evolved over the years from the original house full of books and movie posters into much more.
Looking around the shop, there are every different kind of genre of books you could imagine, both fiction and non-fiction – everything from children’s books to traditional novels, politics, sports, cooking, finance, pop culture, and much more.
“We go to book sales, not as much as we used to,” Yahn said. “We use to travel all around New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania. But we’re getting older. We’ll take whatever people bring in. If we get a call, we’ll go out on a call every once in a while too. And when things are slow here, we also list online.”
There are also comic books, CDs, and a large collection of vinyl records.
“What’s neat is we’ve gotten some of the younger generations who will stop in and buy the records,” Yahn said.
Quite simply, it’s a book and music lover’s dream where one could spend hours perusing all it has to offer.
And even though they’ve been on the block a while, Yahn still stresses the importance of getting the word out.
“It can be hard to get the word out,” he said. “Business has been alright. We shut down for a few months because when COVID first hit. It’s hard to get the people to come back in. We had some regular customers that were a little slow to come back. We just hope to stay busy during the summer and the online sales help get us through in the winter.”
