The independent Acton bookstore The Silver Unicorn has won the 2025 Book Publishers Representatives of New England Independent Spirit Award. It is one of the few stores to win the award within the first 10 years of establishment.
This is the one award that the 182 New England Independent Booksellers Association member bookstores can win. The Silver Unicorn’s owner, Paul Swydan, said the award is essentially for bookstore of the year and is an enormous accomplishment. He said all the publishers’ representatives decide together on one winner of the award. However, each representative focuses on one region of New England, and therefore they do not all see the same stores. It is likely, Swydan said in a recent interview with the Press, that the representative who visited the store thought the store was deserving enough to advocate for it to the other representatives.
Swydan started The Silver Unicorn eight years ago. Since its beginning, Swydan said, he has always focused on three core values in running the store: convenience, curation, and community. He said he strives to be more convenient than Amazon and wants to make sure that anyone can find a book that interests them. And while he tries to curate the books to the best of his ability, if the store does not have the book a person seeks, the customer can order any book in print while in the store.
Swydan’s third core value, community, is arguably what led to the store’s award. Swydan said he tries to support the community through having a donation bin for the Acton Food Pantry and by sponsoring school plays. “As much as we can make our community stronger, then we’ll all be stronger,” he said.
However, Swydan believes what made the store stand out were its events. In the past year, The Silver Unicorn hosted Jayson Tatum, from the Celtics, in the Maynard Fine Arts Theater; it was the official bookseller for the National Council of the Teachers of English, selling books to a conference of around 8,000 English teachers in Boston; and the store hosted a kids’ graphic novel festival for the third year, which more than 3,000 people attended, according to Swydan.
But beyond these events, Swydan said sales representatives have told him they appreciate how he and his staff take the time to talk to other stores, make an effort to go to industry events, and stay curious about how to be better booksellers.
“You don’t see new stores embracing the publishing industry as enthusiastically as Paul has that often anymore, and they definitely deserve the Independent Spirit Award this year!” the Book Publishers Representatives of New England newsletter said of The Silver Unicorn.
Marley Smith is a student intern at the Press. She attends Northwestern University.
