NEW YORK - Inside Westsider Rare & Used Books, you never know what unique read you’ll find.

“I love going through books, just going to the bottom and finding – oh, wow! I didn’t even know this book existed,” says Linda Herskovic.

Customers say that’s why they liked this place -- and why it will be difficult to say goodbye.  After 35 years on Broadway between 80th and 81st streets, the independent bookseller is closing.

“The end of an era. I’ve worked since I was in my mid-20s and I just turned 50,” co-owner Dorian Thornley says.

Up and down Broadway, vacant storefronts have become commonplace, the result of rising rents forcing mom-and-pop-type stores to call it quits.  But Westsider Rare & Used Books is not the victim of a greedy landlord.

Dorian Thornley, who bought the business in 2002, says sales were steady until the bottom fell out of the business last year.

“I’m sure there’s a bunch of reasons, there was no one thing you can pin it down to. Just a paradigm shift, I guess. But, yea, it was quite quick.”

The store apparently is the victim of the same change in reading habits that caused Goodwill Industries to suddenly stop accepting donations of used books last month. Goodwill said many people are no longer interested in buying them

So now, everything in Westsider Rare & Used Books is discounted  -- 30 percent off each of the 40,000 books lining nearly every inch of its 510 square feet.

“My fondest memories of this bookstore are popping in and seeing what books they have about New York itself,” customer Anthony Bellov says.

“I would come in here just to look at the plays. They have a large selection of plays. And a rotating selection,” says another customer, Dayle Vander Sande.

“It’s just a homey place. It’s a local neighborhood bookstore. There’s not many of those left,” Herskovic says.

But for Thornley, the curated selection and comfortable atmosphere he created are not what he'll miss the most. It will be the customers he came to know.

 “I hope it is remembered fondly by the people who just, you know, were walking around and they came in and they spent half an hour, it was nice and quiet, there was good music playing, and they found a good book they really enjoyed.”