A slow, melancholy country song plays on the radio. Old books and incense, the two smells everyone associates with this place, fill the air. Local art, used paperbacks, donation jars and stickers for everyone in town with a cause. The heart of Plumb Corner, set to stop beating.

The final page for Bev Loves Books will turn August 27 as the beloved independent bookstore at Plumb Corner closes its doors after 12 years of business.

A trickle of customers finds its way into the store, drawn by either the news their town is about to lose its bookstore or the sign advertising the blowout sale Bev, formally Beverly Pierce (but no one calls her that), is holding to get rid of the thousands of books cluttering every surface of her store. Books that are piled in seemingly haphazard fashion with no rhyme or reason, although Bev begs to differ.

"Because I put it there," she said after being asked how she knew where a certain title was buried behind two other stacks of dusty hardcovers. "There is order in my chaos."

That trickle of customers, however, was the problem.

"Everyone has a Kindle now," said Zoey Davis, 9, Bev's unofficial assistant who's been browsing the store "for years."

"More books are bought at Amazon," said Bev. "And you don't have to even leave the house. And look at Borders, Borders is closing too."

The business was never a lucrative venture, but in the past it had been able to support itself.

"I could never live on the money that I made," said Bev. "But I made a dollar or two an hour and could buy lunch once a week. I didn't mind when it could support itself but I can't support it."

With stiff competition from internet book sellers, shortened attention spans and other forms of media, Bev felt it was time to close the store and move on to something less consuming.

"I'll work. I want to work a few days a week," she said. "I don't want to work 50 hours a week. I'd like to find a small job in the mall so I can see all my friends."

Speaking of friends, Bev has plenty with plenty of them coming in and out, snapping up paperbacks while they're a dollar and reminiscing with Bev at the register.

"I'm usually the first person people call to know about something in town," she said. "I had the police call me one day to find out what was going on," she adds with a laugh.

Bev won't be vanishing though. She'll be loading up her remaining books into a box trailer and selling from there after August 27 before she completely closes up shop.

"I'll still be able to be found," she said.

Until then, she's trying to push some more yellowing novels out the door and boxing up the rest for her trailer, charity or the book drop in Marion. An odd combination of sadness and relief in her eyes.

"My customers were the best," she said. "I learned a lot, I laughed a lot, I enjoyed it a lot."