Johannesburg, South Africa — For 10 years, Love Books, a small independent bookstore on the edge of the Melville neighborhood in Johannesburg, has catered to local bibliophiles and authors who love books.

The shop, which celebrated its decade anniversary in early June, is owned by Kate Rogan, a book lover herself and former producer of the Jenny Crwys-Williams show, a popular book talk show on Talk Radio 702 that ran for 22 years, ending in 2014.

“It’s never just a retail space where you’re moving stuff,” Rogan said. “It is part of the community. It’s a place where people come to exchange ideas, see authors. It’s just got a life so much bigger than the shop itself.”

But independent bookstores struggle to stay afloat in South Africa, just as they do in the United States, due to competition from online and chain bookstores like Kalahari Books and Exclusive Books.

“It is quite miraculous that I’m still here operating,” Rogan said.

Rogan said setting prices close to recommended retail prices while also remaining affordable is a major challenge. Independent bookstores like hers are not able to take advantage of bulk discounts in order to increase their profits.

Inequality in education and access to books are also major issues in South Africa.

“Books in the South African context are a struggle,” Rogan said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re Exclusive Books or me or whatever you’re doing in the South African ecosystem. We have such a small reading public, and we have such an enormous amount of people that can’t afford to buy books, or don’t even know how to read, haven’t grown up with a reading culture.”

One advantage of independent bookstores is that they often carry a greater variety of books, Rogan said, catering specifically to the desires of their customers rather than following the mass market plan of a major retail outlet.

This selection is what attracts many of Love Books customers to the store. Lorraine Sithole, a book reviewer and publisher of South African authors, reads about five books a week and visits Love Books weekly to discover new authors and titles. Sithole also founded the long-running Bookworms Book Club, a book club for black women that focuses on community development.

“They have a wide range of titles,” Sithole said. “Almost 80 percent of them I’ve never heard of, and I mean I have been reading ferociously for like 20 years.”

Marjorie Brown, a former librarian who has been frequenting Love Books since its beginning, said she appreciates the shop’s variety of South African authors.

“Their range of South African literature and African literature from our continent generally is phenomenal, and for me, it’s a thinking bookstore,” Brown said. “It’s a bookstore that’s aimed at a critically thinking population.”

But Love Books is not just a space for thinkers. Manager Anna Joubert recalled with a smile a couple who came to the store to have Joubert as a witness to the signing of their prenuptial agreement.

“It has created a space where people can come to and talk about books and feel part of something,” Joubert said. “If all else fails, if it’s not a book, at least it’s to chat and to have a coffee.”

For Rogan, helping people, especially children, foster a love for books is a key reason for her bookstore’s existence.

“It’s a great place to start a love for books, being in a book environment, feeling them, the tactility of them, just creating a passion about books and reading,” Rogan said. “I think it’s easier to be passionate about books in a shop like this than in a supermarket-style bookshop. Because conversations happen in a way they might not happen in a bigger, more impersonal environment.”