Buying an indie bookstore was the business decision Emma Snyder burned to make.
Before she opted to buy 49 percent of the Ivy Bookshop last year, Baltimore native Emma Snyder was in the market to buy an old deli on her childhood street.
“There was this old deli in Woodberry that was across from a house we’d lived in,” Snyder, 38, says. “My siblings said, ‘You have to buy that!’ We conjured up this scheme that we would create a lit center.”
Snyder’s sister, Laurel Snyder, is an award-winning children’s author, while her two brothers work as a math teacher and a guidance counselor.
Then, Snyder crossed paths with Ivy owner Ed Berlin and told him how she was eager to relocate from D.C. to Baltimore.
“Don’t buy old delis before you talk to me,” Berlin said to her.
She and Berlin had met years earlier at a rainy 2014 Baltimore Book Festival and struck up a friendship. Snyder served as the executive director of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation from 2012 to 2017, and Berlin’s store supplied the books for her organization’s Writers in Schools — which brings established writers inside classrooms — whenever the program hit the city’s book fest.
“Baltimore was the place I was most excited to move,” Snyder explains. She’d been planning to transition into a brand-new work/life situation (and to exit PEN/Faulkner), and a smart real estate investment in D.C. gave her good investment potential.
“Without missing a beat, Berlin said, ‘You’ll buy into the Ivy.’ I laughed. ‘It’s not a crazy idea,’ he said, ‘here’s why.’ We had a conversation. It took about 15 minutes for me to go from ‘I couldn’t possibly do that’ to ‘oh-my-God I have to do this!’”
“We found her to be incredibly insightful,” Berlin says alluding to his wife, Ann. “[Emma Synder] has a great business mind, loves books, and is a nonstop engine. As we looked into the future, we thought about whom we’d like to see in place after we’re in retirement. Emma seemed to be the perfect choice. It doesn’t hurt that she’s a Baltimore native and a wonderful person.”
Wonderful person or not, a savvy entrepreneur might be hesitant to invest in the indie bookstore model that’s seemed doomed since before the 1998 movie “You’ve Got Mail.” But Snyder said that her storied background in the nonprofit world gave her easy confidence.
“It’s not like a way to get rich,” she says, referring to bookstore ownership, “but I think my lack of crippling anxiety derives from my experience at PEN Faulkner. I learned a lot there by doing.”
Next up for Snyder is participation — via the Ivy — in the Eastside Writers’ Cooperative, a community organization that will provide a youth program, gym, dining option, office space and — cue Snyder — a bookshop, the profits of which will fuel the coop.
“I visited an elementary school two days ago and when kids asked, ‘What inspired you to love reading?’ I said, ‘Probably my older siblings. I’m the third of four kids. I adored my older brother and sister growing up. They were both readers. Within my family, there were tons of books around. Mom was a high school English teacher, my stepdad was a journalist, and my dad and stepmom are big readers. Dad became a professor eventually.”
Snyder’s retired father now works the odd shift at The Ivy — because his daughter is finally home.
Betsy Boyd is a Baltimore-based freelance writer and editor.
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