BookHampton Owner Plans to Close Bookstores After the Holidays

Charline Spektor, the owner of BookHampton, plans to close her bookstores in Southampton Village and East Hampton Village after this holiday season—though she is holding out hope that someone will take over the business and carry on BookHampton’s legacy.

Spektor and her late husband, Jeremy Nussbaum, bought BookHampton, which has been in business for four decades, in 2000.

“Jeremy and I thought it would be a wonderful way to participate in the community and both of us loved books and were both very involved in the book industry,” Spektor said Tuesday. She formerly owned a successful audiobook publishing company. “We didn’t play golf, we didn’t play tennis. We loved to read books, we loved to talk about books and we thought it would be terrific to have a bookstore.”

Over the years they expanded with stores in Sag Harbor, Amagansett and Mattituck, though each has since closed. The Southampton store moved locations a couple times, but never left the center of the village.

Spektor is proud of BookHampton’s employees and speaks very highly of them.

“The booksellers that we have are people who really read books—they don’t pretend to read books,” Spektor said. “They know books. They have a depth of book knowledge. That’s an incredible resource and that shouldn’t be lost. So my sincere hope is that someone or some group of people will come along and say this is too good to let go of—because it is. It’s something irretrievable.”

Spektor said her decision is not a reflection of the “book depression that has closed many old indie-bookstores.” Rather, it is a personal one.

“I want to start a new chapter in my life,” she said. “I want to fully commit myself to gun control legislation.”