We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Vanessa Ortiz a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Vanessa , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I’ve been a stay at home mom since 2019. I really struggled with anxiety and depression after having a stillbirth in 2018, and after i had my second son in 2019 i couldn’t bring myself to work again, and i always knew i just never did good working for people so i wasn’t sure where my career path would bring me when the time came that all my kids were in school. Fast forward to 2022 i started reading again to kind of stay of social media so much. My love for books returned and i made a bookstagram so i could connect with other readers and share reviews. My reading again prompted my husband to get back into reading comic books so we kind of share a mutual love for reading. Around January 2023 we’re preparing for my son to start upk and my mother kids are in 6th and 8th grade and I’m like
What am i going to do with myself ? My husband already had a tattoo studio that was rather large and he kind of toyed around with adding another artist in the studio and ultimately we decided to open a bookstore and tattoo shop. I combined my love for used books, and thrift shopping to start getting inventory for the bookstore. We hoped to open in September of 2023 but finically it was a little difficult. It felt like obstacle after obstacle stood
In the way and i started feeling this store was never going to happen. So with the help of friends and lots of hustling we were able to get enough inventory to open in March of 2024. I manage the bookstore part of the shop for the most part while my husband tattoos in the back of the store. We have plan to attend a few adult book fairs, and have plans for events at the store to host local authors. There are other bookstores in the area but none with a tattoo shop. I really want to meet other local book lovers and really build a little
Community hopefully doing book clubs and other things. I never in my life thought I’d combine my love for art, tattoos and books all in one place.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Vanessa Ortiz I’m 35 years old a mom of 3 kids, been married for almost 12 years. My husband has been tattooing
Since 2011, he opened
His tattoo shop in Buffalo May of 2022.
He really has a love for art, and making his clients tattoo ideas possible. I myself draw and used to paint so we both mutually love art. We both have a love for reading as well.
Comic for him and books for me.
Anything from poetry, romance, thrillers memoirs for the most part i read everything. We decided to open a bookstore in the front of his tattoo shop to combine our loves for both things. Kind of bring a new spin on bookstores and make people excited to read, especially a younger crowd. Although we also embrace the older crowd . I try to have a selection for everyone. We want people to come in and be able to get meaningful tattoos, build a relationship with them and also help them to find books they love to read or might be interested in reading all in place.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

I have an absolute love for thrift shopping. And shopping library sales. Which is how i acquired most of my books. My husbands main job is tattooing: but on the side we both sold books. He used an app called what not to build a community to sell books online on the side of tattooing for extra income, and would sell books on pango and on my instagram. I have a decedent following of around 7,200ish people on my personal book page on instagram so i would kind of promote my selling and his selling that way until
We decided we were going to turn this i to a store.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Our journey to this place was a long one. A quick timeline/ overview of this starts in 2010 meeting my husband, he just started out tattooing. He started practicing on me.
In 2011 he got diagnosed with cancer and i found myself pregnant with my second child. He worked while going through chemo and trying to apprentice while tattooing. He never really got into a shop tattooing due to many things,.
Fast forward to 2017 he finally gets into a tattoo shop and builds up a clientele while we lived in Florida . We get pregnant again in 2018 and have a stillbirth and then pregnant again shortly after. In 2029 during covid we felt like life in Florida got super hard it was super expensive and decided to move back home to buffalo. His ultimate goal was always to have his own tattoo shop since 2010
It took 12 years to get there.
Even when we got there from 2022-2023 it was a struggle financially.
When we decided to do the bookstore we did not have the funds for it. I started to hustle selling books on the side, and so did he. I started selling things, made a go fund me , literally did everything i could to get enough money to be able to get our resale license, LLC, shelves and everything. The journey to this place was a difficult one. But we never really let anything keep us from getting here . Kind of just pivoted when needed

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecrackedspine_buffalo?igsh=YzhraHJmdzgycjQ1&utm_source=qr
• Other: The above link is our business page. This one is my personal bookstagram where i do alot of my promoting and interacting. https://www.instagram.com/plantedpages.bookstagram?igsh=MXB5c3duYmRmNG12MA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

Image Credits
I took the photos myself.