Sometimes life can surprise us with how it twists and turns. One day, you’re a local textbook store, and the next, you’re selling movies, guitars, board games, Frisbees, retro video games, and, well, books. That’s exactly what happened to Books N More, located in the heart of downtown Bemidji.

“We started the store selling textbooks. The biggest thing is, textbooks are only a couple months out of the year. So you’re really busy around August, you’re really busy around Christmas, and then the rest of the time, I didn’t really need the space,” explained Books N More owner Mark Wilkowski. “We started out just carrying reading novels just to fill up the space of the store and then we eventually went into DVDs, movies, video games, and it just started expanding from there. As books started going their way out, we started selling more and more items.”

Of course, once inside Books N More, you’ll notice a wide variety of musical instruments, including guitars. These products are so prevalent, that a guitar is featured on the store’s sign.

“This building when we took it on was a KRKB Music Outlet, and when we had first taken it over a couple of the music teachers didn’t have a place to go, so they kept using the same studio rooms and we kept doing music lessons,” said Wilkowski. “It just made sense to carry some instruments, and sell some consumables such as guitar strings or instrument reeds or things like that.”

Of course, if musical instruments aren’t your style, there’s certainly a variety of other products that might prove interesting.

“It keeps it interesting I guess because everything cycles,” explained Wilkowshki, “One month, we do really well in board games here, the next month, disc golf is really big. So during the summer disc golf kinda takes over. During winter with Christmas, we move a lot of instruments, we sell a lot of ukuleles and guitars.”

Whether you’re looking for a new book to read, a childhood favorite board game, or are hoping to break in some skills with an instrument, chances are you can find it at Books N More.

In addition to the store’s many items, they also offer services such as college textbook buybacks and vintage video game console repair.

By — Justin Othoudt