PW Bookstore of the Year 2026: Watchung Booksellers
In a letter nominating Watchung Booksellers for PW’s Bookstore of the Year, journalist and author Candy J. Cooper sums up what makes the Montclair, N.J., bookstore so special.
“Watchung Booksellers is a beloved literary and community hub for anyone who treasures the written word,” Cooper wrote, “a cozy reading space for toddlers, a launchpad for local and regional authors, a recommender of great reads, a partner and promoter of the local literary festival, a beacon of sanity during the pandemic shutdown. The presence of Watchung Booksellers in the neighborhood persuaded me to move to Montclair 30 years ago and makes it difficult to imagine ever leaving now. It has meant more in my life, for my overall sense of happiness and well-being, than any other local business.”
It’s not the first time Watchung has been showered with praise. Last year, Delacorte Press published The Last Bookstore on Earth by Lily Braun-Arnold, whose stint as a bookseller at Watchung inspired her to write a YA novel set in a bookstore. Watchung, she told PW last spring, was her home away from home. “Coworkers, customers, and even the books on the shelves created a sense of community I desperately needed,” she said. “It’s something I realized is vital to surviving an apocalypse, fictional or otherwise.”
Located in a town with approximately 41,000 residents 20 miles west of New York City, Watchung Booksellers is housed in a 1,100 square-foot space and stocks more than 11,000 titles for adult readers, plus gifts. A sister store dedicated to children’s books, The Kid’s Room, with more than 7,000 titles in stock, opened in 2023 in a 1,200 square-foot space a few doors down the street.
Watchung was founded in 1991 by Kathy Linsk and acquired by Margot Sage-EL and Trina Rogers in 1996. At the time, Sage-EL notes, there were five indie bookstores in Montclair. Today, there are two: Watchung and the Montclair Book Center, located in the downtown area since 1984.
In 2000, Sage-EL became Watchung’s sole owner, and in 2022, she transferred ownership to her daughter, Maddie Ciliotta-Young. Sage-EL continues to schedule author events and occasionally works the cash register on Saturdays, describing it as “an eight-hour cocktail party, when I get to talk to everyone who comes in.”
“We have a very literary community here in Montclair,” Ciliotta-Young says, which includes publishing industry executives, journalists, authors, and celebrities such as Stephen Colbert. Many customers give staff leads on books that are trending or about to take off. “We don’t follow bestseller lists, so it’s nice to have this literary community; it helps us choose books that are a little bit more interesting and off the beaten path, and take a chance on debut authors,” Ciliotta-Young says, highlighting The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, one of the store’s topsellers last year, which the staff got behind before word of mouth propelled it onto bestseller lists.
Also contributing to the store’s success, Ciliotta-Young says, are the 15 booksellers who work at the two locations. “Each of our booksellers kind of owns a section of the store,” Ciliotta-Young says, “and if there’s a particular genre that they enjoy, they might do the buying for that genre.”
Sales have increased since the pandemic ended, Ciliotta-Young says. And sales at The Kids Room, she notes, are rising “drastically” as the store ramps up its school visits, book fairs, and weekend programming.
Montclair, Ciliotta-Young says, “has always been ultra-supportive of us. I think people very much want us here, and so they’re willing to shop here, even though it might be cheaper or faster somewhere else. We don’t take that for granted, so we try and give back as much as we can and connect with the community as much as we can. We want to give people things that an algorithm or an internet experience can’t give them.”