Walk into Xenophile Bibliophile and Armorer, Chronopolis – more later on that name – and either owner Steve Woolfolk or general manager Brian Sheldon will ask the customer a question.
“Have you been in here before?”
If the answer is no, expect a short tour around the store at 2240 Robertson Drive.
“I had to cut my tours down,” Sheldon said. “I used to go on for 45 minutes.”
Makes sense, though.
Both Woolfolk and Sheldon are extremely proud of their Richland bookstore, which carries an estimated 80,000 books.
It’s easy to stroll through the aisles of the nearly 6,000-square-foot shop and miss something. There is just so much to see.
And it’s not just the books, which include some first and early editions, some from the 1600s.
The shop in the Horn Rapids Industrial Park sells movie posters, science fiction toys and memorabilia, and various collectibles, including numerous non-sports trading cards.
Woolfolk also displays his collection of swords around the store.
And there is a room devoted to the history of the Manhattan Project and the Tri-Cities area.
Xenophile sells souvenirs for the B Reactor Museum Association and those who tour the nearby B Reactor Manhattan Project National Park visitor center often stop in. Souvenirs are among the most popular items leaving the store.
Suffice it to say that the quirky Xenophile is a place that grew from a lifetime love of books, especially science fiction.
“When you walk into our science fiction section, I believe it’s probably the best science fiction collection west of the Mississippi River, and probably more than that,” said Woolfolk, who has spent 50 of his 76 years collecting books.
“The first book I ever purchased was the ‘History of the Spanish American War,’” he said. “I bought it for $3.95, and my dad thought it was a dumb idea. But I thought it was a really cool book. By the time I got out of college, I knew that someday I would have a bookstore.”
Brian Sheldon, left, and Steve Woolfolk are proud of their Richland bookstore, which carries an estimated 80,000 books.
| Photo by Jeff MorrowOut-of-the-way bookstore
Woolfolk’s collection has been featured in various media outlets over the years. For a long time it had been crammed into his Kennewick home, which had “4,000 square feet of books … with 18 inches of space in between shelves.”
Woolfolk, a third generation Hanford employee, a radiological engineer, traveled around with his own nuclear library for work because it was too hard to find one.
He made sure to include that library in the bookstore.
As he neared retirement age, Woolfolk felt it was time to open his bookstore. He found land in the Horn Rapids Industrial Park, just off the Vantage Highway, to build his dream bookstore in 2018.
The $500,000 project was completed in late 2019 with the help of Sheldon.
A retired military advisor, Sheldon owned a bookstore in Richland’s Uptown Shopping Center until 1998 called Sheddes and Peasant, Booksellers, which later was called Sheldon Library.
Sheldon and Woolfolk met through a mutual friend and decided to become partners in Xenophile.
“He has his books in here. I have mine,” Woolfolk said.
They collect revenue from their own books, but they share the revenue if they both own something.
“I had been retired 10 years, and I was listless,” Sheldon said. “Then the store opportunity came up with this empty lot. I got to help build this building. And I get to organize things.
“While Steve is the collector, I am the display,” Sheldon said. “You know, Star Trek was right. Space is the final frontier,” referring to the need for more of it to house their books and collections.
Here’s the one concern the two have about their store: A lot of people around the Mid-Columbia still don’t know it exists.
“That’s the biggest problem. Nobody knows we are here. It definitely is a backwater location,” Woolfolk said.
Sheldon said they both looked at several buildings, but “they were all too expensive.”
A cat, an unusual name
After opening the store, the next step was to find a cat because two things are bad for books: water and mice.
The black cat they adopted, Sonia Lovecraft (named after the wife of science fiction and horror writer H.P. Lovecraft), has the run of the store with scratching posts tucked into every nook and cranny.
In a 2018 Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business story, Woolfolk and Sheldon talked about the meaning of their store name.
Xenophile was an early science fiction and pulp collector’s magazine, and it means people attracted to the strange – aliens, creatures and strangers.
Bibliophile stands for bookstore.
Armorer refers to supplies of ray-guns, space ports, playset armies and perhaps swords.
And Chronopolis is a city, in times that are probably unstable.
“We usually refer to it as XBAC, or if we’re in a conversation, we’ll say Xenophile Books,” Woolfolk said.
Perfect pairings
Each partner is living their dream.
“After I get to feed the cat, I get to research books,” Woolfolk said. “I love nuclear history. I get to do whatever I please. The only bad thing is I have to do the books once a month to stay in business.”
About four months ago, Woolfolk sold a customer an early printing of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”
As a serious collector, he had no remorse.
“But I still think about that book. I remember somebody bought that book,” he said. “But I do feel a sense of success. Because I believe they’ll enjoy having it like I did.”
Sheldon loves these kinds of perfect pairing stories.
He talks about a woman who came into the store looking for a book her late father read to her and her brother decades ago.
When her dad died, he bequeathed it to her brother.
“This woman had spent the last 25 years searching for this book,” Sheldon said. “We had two first editions here, and she bought them both.”
Sheldon concentrates on store displays.
“I’m a reader, not a collector,” said Sheldon. “Steve is a collector.”
Sheldon’s next project is to display the art they own. They have plenty of tabletop books, and 15 bookshelves ready to hold them. But they have to make space.
“Star Wars stuff is popular,” said Sheldon. “And Stephen King is really popular.”
They wish more people knew about their out-of-the way shop.
“We get more people from out of town than we do from the locals,” Sheldon said.
Store hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday through Saturday, but Woolfolk says more often than not he’s there every day and will answer the phone.
Xenophile Bibliophile and Armorer, Chronopolis: 2240 Robertson Drive, 509-375-7505, xenophilebooks.com.