The fact that the Vestavia Hills Cokesbury store will close its doors early next year has been confirmed via phone. Yesterday, the United Methodist Publishing House announced that they were closing all 38 of their full-line stores and 19 of their school campus/seminary bookstores.

The statement says that the United Methodist Publishing House and Cokesbury are bowing to their customers’ trending to buying online, which makes the overhead of keeping stores open too high.

They tried to spin a little positive angle by announcing a new online selling system called CokesburyNEXT, but it just won’t be the same as being able to go into a bookstore and thumb through the weighty texts that make up many religious books. It’s really too bad. The local Cokesbury staff has always been great and helpful. So sad to see another bookstore close.