Cliff’s Books

Cliff’s Books has operated in downtown DeLand since 1983, which makes it one of the longest-running independent retail businesses on Woodland Boulevard and a fixture of the district long before most of the boutiques and restaurants that surround it today opened their doors. The shop is run personally by its owner, Cliff, a detail that matters in a business built around tracking down specific titles and hard-to-find items for regular customers, something that requires the kind of institutional memory only an owner-operator tends to carry.

The inventory spans well beyond a conventional used bookstore. Books share shelf space with comics, toys, records, and games, making Cliff’s as much a stop for collectors of vintage pop culture material as it is for readers looking for a used paperback. That mix is part of what has kept the shop relevant across four decades of change in both the book trade and the collectibles market, where comics and records in particular have seen renewed collector interest even as digital reading and streaming have reshaped how most people consume books and music.

Cliff’s keeps a tighter and more specific schedule than many downtown shops, open Wednesday through Saturday and closed the rest of the week, with hours running from noon to 5pm on the shorter days and 10am to 5pm on Saturday. The shop recommends checking its Instagram account for any changes to that schedule, a common practice among small owner-run shops where hours can shift around events, buying trips, or simple staffing realities that a big-box retailer would never have to navigate. Customers can also reach the shop directly by email, another sign of the personal, direct-contact model that has defined Cliff’s since it opened.

The storefront sits on North Woodland Boulevard within DeLand’s historic downtown commercial district, a walkable stretch of early twentieth-century brick buildings that now house the bulk of the city’s independent retail. Forty-plus years in the same trade puts Cliff’s Books in a small category of DeLand businesses that predate the district’s more recent revival as a shopping and dining destination, and the shop’s continued focus on hunting down specific books, comics, and collectibles for customers reflects a business model built on personal relationships rather than turnover volume. For collectors and readers in West Volusia County, Cliff’s remains one of the most reliable places to look for out-of-print books or a specific back issue that a general retailer would never think to stock.