Peter Miller 
Shopkeeping 
Stories, Advice, and Observations

A love letter to the small shop, and shop owners everywhere, by beloved bookseller Peter Miller.


For more than four decades, Peter Miller has run a design bookshop that shares his name in Seattle. He has also written three of his own books, manuals about cooking and about food and about eating together. In 
Shopkeeping, Miller writes for the first time about his other love: shopkeeping.


“There is a tradition of shopkeeping, a tradition of codes, etiquette, and customs. For the most part, it is an oral history, passed along, person to person. You learn to be a retailer—not by going to college, but by going to work. You learn from people who have learned how to run a shop.” [from the Introduction]


Over ten chapters, Miller crafts stories from the bookshop floor with wry humor and skillful storytelling. Readers will laugh out loud as they come to understand along the way that small shops characterize our towns and cities, making them unique, special, and worth visiting and living near. An essay collection for book and bookshop lovers, small business owners, and Seattle natives, transplants, and visitors,  
Shopkeeping captures the art and heart of running a local shop cherished by the community that surrounds it.

About the author

Peter Miller opened Peter Miller Books, an architecture bookshop, in Seattle in 1980, and has grown it into the thriving and beloved local bookshop it is today. He was a member of the Seattle Design Commission from 1998 to 2001, an honorary member of the AIA, and a writer for Food52 and Post Alley. He lives in Langley, Whidbey Island, WA, with his wife Colleen and takes the Sounder train each morning to work.