Made in KC co-founder Tyler Enders led a group of investors to purchase Rainy Day Books from original owner Vivien Jennings in 2023. Since then, they have developed a 16-person leadership team to oversee the care and administration of the independent Fairway, Kansas, bookseller. Enders’ work with Made in KC focuses on strengthening the Kansas City community, where 90 cents of every dollar spent at the retailer returns to local businesses and individuals. Although new general manager Annie Krieg has taken over most of the bookstore’s responsibilities, Enders is still passionate about where Rainy Day Books fits into the community.
Why did you and your partners think purchasing Rainy Day Books was important? My business partners, Keith Bradley and Thomas McIntyre, and I—all independently of each other—knew this was something we’d want to pursue. For us, it’s about creating community. As we think about what adds to the community, the three of us agree that an independent bookstore has got to be at the top of the list. If we’re going to have Rainy Day Books for the next 50 years, well, we’re pretty uniquely positioned to do it justice, not only leveraging our expertise but also leveraging our reach.
Why, specifically, do you think books are important? Books let people come to conclusions and explore new ideas in a really low-pressure way. I think that storytelling is just a really elegant way for people to push their boundaries and explore new perspectives. You can explore characters you might not encounter in your day-to-day life. You can see those people and those character traits with more humanity.
What makes independent books shops more integral to the community than chains? We bring in dozens of new books every week. So the value of an independent local bookseller or bookstore is that we have a sense of what our community might be interested in, what our community is going to read. We know our customers and can make recommendations. I think the value of having independent bookstores is that we’re curating things that make sense for Kansas City. That doesn’t mean that we’re staying within a bubble. It means that we’re also intentionally expanding beyond it.
I feel like the death of books has come and gone so many times now. Where do you see the future of books in a community? Even though the publishing industry has taken so many different hits, there are many ways to publish a book right now. And there are a lot of great ideas out there. It’s amazing to see people who will independently publish something and then it gets picked up. There’s so many good ideas coming to the fore, and having an opportunity to get in front of readers—it really benefits readership.
