

NORTH HAMPTON – At 68 Lafayette Road the Book Outlet is empty, it’s walls bare, and the closure is seen as a huge loss to the community and book lovers everywhere.


Marshall Miller ran his store at the North Hampton Village Shopping Center for two decades and the decision to close was very difficult, he said. In mid-March when all non-essential retail stores were ordered closed due to COVID-19 safeguards, Miller thought he’d reopen.


But as news about the virus worsened daily, he felt that even when he was allowed to reopen things wouldn’t be the same. His concern was the health of customers and employees.


The pandemic’s dangers and restrictions helped him pull the trigger, said the 74-year-old, but a number of factors came together and he realized this was the time to close up shop, relax and enjoy time with his wife Marilyn.


"My health had a couple of setbacks ... cash flow wasn’t great and I was concerned where I’d be financially when I opened back up," Miller said. "Running a business is expensive. I always said to myself that the day I had to pour my own personal money into a store, it would be the time to get out. I loved all those years at that store, but it was time to bring it to an end."


Miller would have held a big going-out-of-business book sale, but the pandemic restrictions made that impossible.


"I gave the books to a man who donates books to more than 100 charitable agencies," he said.


Starting as a clerk in other people’s stores, Marshall is a 50-year veteran bookseller, opening and closing 10 stores during 45 of those years in different locations, including one at Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace. On the Seacoast, he owned the Paperback Booksmith at the former Newington Mall for 25 years before the mall closed.


With the onset of internet booksellers, like Amazon, and large corporate entities, like Barnes & Noble, independent booksellers have had it hard in recent decades, but Miller made his work. His success was a mix of knowing what he was doing, loving the interaction with customers and employees and because he just loves books.


"I am a reader," he confirmed.


His first local store was a book and music outlet at North Hampton’s Lafayette Crossing. He moved south to the North Hampton Village Shopping Center in 1991 and never looked back.


The Book Outlet was a new kind of store for its time, offering readers books at prices that allowed them to read as much as their eyes could tolerate. And for those with overflowing bookcases, Miller bought back gently read volumes of all kinds.


Whether looking for a classic like the "Iliad," "The Fountainhead," "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "Catcher in the Rye," Miller had them on his shelves or would order them. Cookbooks, the latest best sellers – fiction or non-fiction – could also be found used or new.


Miller’s shop was the place to go to find the elusive first novel in a series after becoming enthralled with the second. It was also a blessing to parents wanting to fill their children’s bookcases or get the books for their summer reading lists. New or used, Miller’s books sold at discounted prices.


Local residents loved him for it.



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Librarian Susan Leonardi, a member of North Hampton’s Board of Library Trustees, said the Book Outlet was a treasure that will be missed for everything it offered, including Miller’s friendly and conversational manner.


"I bought so many of my daughter's textbooks from the Book Outlet when she was a student at St. Thomas Aquinas High School," Leonardi said. "All the STA families would buy and sell books there."


Hampton resident and Book Outlet part-time employee Kathy Longo said Miller was a great boss, and she’ll miss going to work there because she loved it and the customers.


For Miller, closing the doors took a piece of his heart.


"I had people at the door crying," Miller said. "I am so grateful to everyone. I’m humbled by their response. The store wasn’t just work to me; I love it and my customers."


For Stratham resident Beth Weaver, this reading emporium "was much more than a bookstore."


"The Book Outlet, Marshall Miller and his staff have brought so much to many of us," she wrote in her letter to the Hampton Union. "Marshall, you may have thought you were selling books. It was more than that. You were enriching lives. For that, we are all grateful."


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