Enchanted Violet Bookstore Celebrates Successful First Year
- Philip Thibodeau
- 5 days ago
- 7 min read
Starting a successful small business is notoriously hard. One path to success is to identify an under-served market and then figure out an effective way to reach your customers. Opal Rodriguez, creator of The Enchanted Violet bookstore, found that market: LGBQT+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, trans, and other) books and gifts. She also figured out how to connect with her customers using Instagram and TikTok. Now people flock from across southern New England to visit her space on the first floor of 51 Main Street.
Enchanted Violet opened one year ago, on March 1, 2025. The Outsider sat down with Rodriguez last Thursday to learn more about her business.
Tell me about your background and how you got the idea for this business.
I’m from Texas originally. I grew up in the center of Texas – Stephenville, “the Cowboy Capital” - and went to college down in Houston. I went to school for business and somehow got a minor in fashion – I didn’t mean to do that, it just happened! After I graduated, I knew I didn’t want to stay in Texas anymore. I threw a dart at a map and it hit Connecticut.
I came up here knowing I wanted to start some kind of business. I didn’t know if it was going to be clothing or books or what it was I wanted to do. When I first moved here, I was working three jobs at a time, trying to save up enough and also to live.
I knew I wanted to open up a store that would make some sort of change. The great thing about all the books in here is that they’re all LGBTQ+ theme or disability or some less visible representation. There’s a lot of indie books that aren’t making it into Barnes & Noble. I’m constantly reaching out to authors that don’t have their books in stores. It’s really cool to work with them. The authors are all over the country, and I have some local ones that come in for signings. I do a lot of collaborations with other local businesses like Fable, and I have one coming up this month with StellaLuna. It's been a lot of fun doing community events and outreach.
Did you ever see yourself opening up a bookstore when you were younger?
I’ve always been a huge reader. I went to a very small school, and I read all the books in the library. I had to go to other schools to get books. I always loved reading, but I didn’t know I was going to do this.
I was a music major first. But then I found out I was completely deaf in one ear, and I have to wear a hearing aid. And I was getting carpal tunnel in my right hand. It was like, ‘Surgery, or keep playing?’ Ugh. I backtracked out of that and put down my flute and said, ‘what else do I like?’ It was a big re-evaluation of what I needed to do with my life. I said, let me go into business for now and figure it out as I go.
How did you end up in Southington?
I wanted to find a location that didn’t already have an independent bookstore. Barnes & Noble, they’re going to be everywhere, but I didn’t want to be in direct competition with another independent. I live in Torrington, but Howard’s Bookstore is there, and they’re fantastic. I didn’t want to be stepping on anyone’s toes. I was looking in the Southington/Bristol/Plainville area, and I found this spot, which was good for a startup. Hopefully in a year I’ll be able to expand, maybe add a café.
Where are your customers from?
I have Southington locals, but I get a lot of people who drive here from, well, everywhere. They’ll come in and say, I’m from Rhode Island, I’m from Boston, I’m from New York, and you’re the only place that carries this very niche thing, the only LGBTQ+ bookstore in Connecticut. It’s really cool. I had one person, she said, I was visiting from Washington State, I saw you on TikTok and I wanted to visit you before I left. I was like, that’s so cool!
I get a lot of young people, but I also get some older people from the community. They are like, ‘Wow, I really wish I had this when I was a kid.’ That makes my heart swell.
You seem to be reaching people by social media. Do you pay for advertising?
When I first started I paid a little to up the view on Instagram posts. But I haven’t needed to in months. I have the follower count now where I don’t really need to. I just kind of hope that the algorithm does its work. I send a post out into the void and say, it will either do well or it will flop. If it flops, I will do it again.
What have your most popular events been?
My most popular events to date were the Powerpoint Nights we host. You can bring any Powerpoint for ten minutes and talk about any topic you want. It got crowded in here, it was fun. We put a projector screen by the windows and folding chairs in a circle.
We hold a bookclub the first Saturday of each month. People can join or leave at any time. We have a Discord channel where people can vote on the book. I’m not going to be ‘book dictator’ – you guys pick whatever you want and I’ll read it with you! We’ve done books from romance to horror to fantasy.
What are your best sellers?
There are two big ones right now. There’s a resurgence of a book series that came out in 2017 called Heated Rivalry [by Rachel Reid]. There is a TV show about it. It is flying off the shelves nonstop. The entire Game Changer series is amazing. I just had a girl come in like two days ago and say, 'Can I come and talk to you for my college class about Heated Rivalry?' I was like, 'Sure, that’s fine!'
The other one is a series called ‘Can’t Spell Treason without T’ by Rebecca Thorn. She’s a very famous author; she’s amazing. She came in here for a signing last November, very kind. She just put out Gilded Abyss – it had this big cliffhanger at the end! Her next one’s coming out this summer. That was my number one seller last year: Can’t Spell Treason without T.
Do you have any favorite recent reads?
(Laughs.) That’s so hard! I’m not a weird person, really, but it’s called The Lamb, by Lucy Rose. It’s a horror book about a mom raising her daughter to be a cannibal. It was mortifying, but so good, so horrible, and disgusting, and profound. I wasn’t into horror before last year, but I think I’ve read like sixteen horror books since then. Loved that one.
There’s a book called Love Immortal that I read [by Kit Vincent]. It’s a queerish retelling of Dracula. A guy is going to school to take care of books and he falls in love with this Dark Literature professor who turns out to be Dracula. It’s very good. At first I thought, ‘cutesy romance,’ but at the end I was crying it was so good.
What book genres are in here?
We have non-fiction, horror, thrillers mixed with horror, fantasy and romantasy. I have some banned books in here that schools have been removed their libraries because they don’t want kids to read them anymore. I have romance for older and younger crowds. I have some middle grade and kids' books. We have three different manga sections. Yuri, which is girl love. We have normal manga: Shonen is for boys, Shojo is for girls. We have Danmei, which are Chinese novels, and Baihe, though only two or three so far.
What else do you sell that people should know about?
I have sixteen local artists in here. Only four are not from the immediate area. One is from Texas because I went to college with her. She is amazing, she makes all the jewelry over there. Her handle is Sugar Bee RPG. Everybody else is pretty local. Mad Labs works at a theater company in town. I’m having a new dice artist come in, Modern Artifice. He sells D&D dice at Ren[aissance] Fairs. Very cool people. Bone to Pick, she sells at Ren fairs and punk rock flea markets in Connecticut.
Do you have a book you want to write?
Oh yes! I’ve written under a different name and published. I don’t want people knowing about it and coming up to talk about the book – it’s embarrassing and I get all nervous. But yes, I have written and I’m working on another fantasy right now.
What are your biggest challenge running the business?
Keeping up with everything. The weather affects how many people come in. Starting in a smaller place, because I don’t have an outdoor sign. But I can deal with it.
I know that they drill ‘location, location, location’ in business school. That is important. But at the same time, if you promote enough and people like the niche enough, they will come. And remember to keep posting, keep promoting, until you get sick of it.
What’s the most rewarding thing?
Honestly, the joy when people come in and say, this is so cute, this is so fun, so cool. I had a girl that came in the very first day I opened and she was like, ‘Can I hug you?’ and I was like, ‘Sure, of course.’ She goes ‘You’re one of my biggest inspirations. I want to be like you when I grow up.’ I have older people in the queer community that say, ‘I really wish I had this when I was a kid. I went through so much when I was a kid.’
There’s this whole idea of a ‘trailblazer.’ I don’t find myself to be a trailblazer because there are other queer bookstores in America. But maybe I’m a little baby [trailblazer] for this community, and it’s so much fun.
Yet so much pressure! There are like 500 queer books coming out each year and like 50,000 in circulation. Keeping track of them is a big thing.
