BRUNSWICK

On Presidents Day, when many businesses were closed, Beth Leonard and Gary Lawless were busy helping a steady stream of customers find what they wanted.

For a little, independent, leftof center store, that type of customer care is what it takes to survive in a social media world without a website, an RSS feed or constant chirping from the Twitter powerline.

Claudia Beckwith stopped by on the holiday to look for a book about guns for her son-inlaw.

“They know my name,” she said as Leonard wrote the title of the special order book in a college-ruled notebook.

“It’s small here. And the people actually know what’s in it,” she said.

The small-box model

When it opened on Maine Street 34 years ago, it could never be described as having “big box” potential.

The store has had three locations over the years. The first spot, since demolished, was next to the Joshua L. Chamberlain House, which Lawless said “should’ve been torn down” before the pair rented it. Then came 15 years in the building that now houses Henry & Marty restaurant.

The store’s most recent home is at 134 Maine St.

But it doesn’t matter where Gulf of Maine hangs its shingle. “We’re a community, downtown, local bookstore and over the years we’ve figured out what our customers want and we try to keep that around,” Lawless said.

In a literary retail landscape that has seen much larger local bookstores sink under their own weight in the flood of digital publishing, Gulf of Maine has managed not only to stay afloat, but to ride whatever the current wave might be.

“We’ve sort of developed a loyal clientele and we’ve always been about books more than other merchandise. People who want good literature know they can find that here,” Leonard said.

Those readers will also find political bumper stickers, postcards of the Beatles and Sylvia Plath, a selection of literary magazines like the quarterly “Granta,” greeting and note cards by Maine artists, and a whole section — more like a small room — devoted to poets and poetry.

“You won’t find a romance section or a mystery section (though the store carries titles that fall into those genres). We feature poetry,” Leonard said.

Not surprising, since Lawless’s companion career is as a publishing poet, frequent guest reader and teacher of poetry.

“We sell poetry every single day,” Leonard said.

Book lovers will find a store that features many of the republished works of Ruth Moore, a Maine novelist who once starred on the New York Times Bestseller list and whose works went out of print.

Books like “The Weir” and “Spoon-handle” appear on Gulf of Maine shelves because Lawless started a small press, Blackberry Books, just so that they could be republished.

Most of all, those who appreciate life on the manageable scale of a small town will find a bookstore imbued with the spirit and values of the people who run it.

It’s more like combing through the library of a hippy grandmother’s summer cottage, than the latte and pop lit brunch and browse of Barnes & Noble.

“There’s something to be said for staying small,” Leonard said.

Always a birthday party

To celebrate their survival, as Lawless joked, the couple, who met as fellow employees of Bookland in the 1970s, celebrate with a bookselling birthday party, today and Saturday. They do it every year.

Because the bookstore is now in its 30s, all books will be 30 percent off both days.

On Saturday, there will be a birthday party at 3 p.m. with food and drink, door prizes and a reading by Brunswick author Maria Padian to celebrate her new book, “Out of Nowhere.”

Set in Lewiston, the book deals with French Canadian and Somali teenagers, high school soccer, and the coming of the Somali people to Lewiston. As the characters in the book struggle to learn how to get along, how to behave respectfully and intelligently, the reader learns as well.

“We usually reach out to authors who we want to come read,” Leonard said. Both she and Lawless read Padian’s book and agreed they wanted to help promote it.

“But we can never guarantee that anyone will show up. We had two events at Christmas that only averaged two or three people per event,” Lawless said. “If we had Richard Blanco (poet of President Obama’s inaugural poem) a year ago, no one would have come.”

Birthdays are special, though, and for Padian’s reading, Leonard and Lawless expect a good turnout. “They might come in for the 30 percent off but people who come will really be in for something special,” Leonard said.

What’s special, too, is booksellers who take the time to read the books they sell, who get excited to share that work with other people, not as a commodity, but as a treasure.

“It’s books, but it’s also that we want people to meet and talk and come here and get to see that literature isn’t something ‘out there.’ It’s right here. Just down the street,” Lawless said.

rshelly@timesrecord.com