Born out of the Central Wisconsin Infoshop, The Bookshop Co-op is a bookstore with programming aimed at empowering our friends and neighbors and connecting people with the literature they didn’t know they needed.
About Us
The Bookshop Co-op, based in Stevens Point, WI, is a justice-driven cooperative mobile and pop-up bookstore, and vehicle for education and community building. We do this by selling consciousness raising books, documentaries, board, and tabletop games, as well as sponsoring events and programs such as poetry slams/ spoken word open mics, cooperative game nights, pet adoption, writer workshops, and other events, to fulfill our mission of fostering societal transformations through access to knowledge. We believe that every community deserves organizations that push the public consciousness to engage with the world more critically and approach each other with radical kindness. We also know that it's not enough to just know that inequalities exist but to instead have a critical and class-conscious approach to understanding why these issues exist and what we can all do to make the systems we interact with more equitable. We're more than just a bookshop; we're a force for good in our community.
Our Projects
Bookshop Co-op On Wheels!
Our original idea of a mobile bookstore is alive and well! We hope to take our bookselling on the road, bringing our curated selection of books to communities around central Wisconsin. We love people and we love books, we hope to combine our passions through this project.
While we work on getting some wheels, we’re still popping up around the Stevens Point area. Follow us on Facebook to find out where we’ll be.
Welcoming Bookmobile Fuelers!
Become a part of The Bookshop Co-op community. We’re offering a donation package that will help us get some wheels. For $40 you’ll receive some sweet merch while supporting our dream of taking literature on the road to towns and villages in the central Wisconsin region that don’t have bookstores.
Purchase the Fuel Campaign package in someone else’s name so they can say they are fueling the bookmobile.
When we do get a vehicle, we’ll be sure to put the names of all our donors on the vehicle so wherever we go, we know who helped us get there.
Dreaming of a Storefront
As our business grows we will eventually have too many books for our bookmobile alone and we will need a storefront. Our dreams of having a store with room for all our books and meeting spaces for our book club, workshops, and community meetings are sure to come true.
Do you know of a Stevens Point location that would be suitable for The Bookshop Co-op? Email us!
Monthly Newsletter
Sign up for our monthly newsletter to read Thoughts From the Chair, a letter from the chair of our board of directors. There’s also an announcements section where you can find out where we’ll be popping up.
Podcast Episode
As participants in Create Portage County’s Surge program, we were interviewed by Chris Klesmith about The Bookshop Co-op. Hailey and Justin explain the cooperative’s justice-driven mission and dedication to creating access to critical literacy.
Listen to our podcast episode and the episodes from the other #surge innovators.
The Bookshop Co-op Wins!
We were one of four winners of Surge! After working on this project from February to September 2021 we finally attended the Surge Expo with our fellow innovators and we won $2,500!
“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
What is a cooperative business?
The Cooperative model emphasizes democratic member control and economic participation. Each member actively participates in decision-making.