It’s been more than a month since owners of Tattered Cover started soliciting offers for someone to buy Denver’s independent bookstore chain.

The retailer has been under bankruptcy since last year after struggling to recover from pandemic shutdowns and online competition. It closed three stores in Westminster, Colorado Springs and downtown Denver’s McGregor Square.

In March, the bookstore’s owner Bended Page LLC announced a path to get Tattered Cover out of bankruptcy before the end of the year and profitable again by 2025. But several weeks later, it asked the federal bankruptcy court to delay a hearing to confirm its plan in order to get time to consider selling the bookstore all together.

So what’s going on? Here’s a breakdown.

Who wants to buy Tattered Cover?

It’s still unclear who wants to take over the bookstore because of nondisclosure agreements potential buyers signed with Tattered Cover.

But court filings from May 15 reveal the company has eight parties interested in putting in a bid and there may be more who have yet to sign NDAs to solidify talks with management.

And there may be an interested buyer that’s part of the publishing industry as the Bended Page’s board of directors reached out to their industry connections who they believed might be interested in the sale, the company said in the filing.

“At least one such contact has executed a non-disclosure agreement,” it added.

Will the next owners continue a lineage of local ownership? 

When Tattered Cover announced it was looking for buyers in March, a company statement said the chain got interest from locally based parties.

But it also said the owners talked with interested entities from out-of-state.

A company spokesperson told the Denver Gazette over email Friday that Tattered Cover is looking for a buyer that will uphold the legacy left behind by its former owner Joyce Meskis, who died in 2022, and was an advocate for free speech.

“Tattered Cover is a very well-known and respected brand with enormous equity,” the company spokesperson said. “We’re looking for new ownership that will continue the operational culture and First Amendment legacy that has made Tattered Cover one of the nation’s iconic independent bookstores.”

When will Tattered Cover find a new owner?

The bookstore may have new owners this summer.

Interested buyers have to place a bid by June 10, court documents show. If there’s two or more bids placed, Tattered Cover will have a video conference auction set for June 12.

And when — or if — it sells, court records said the sale would have to close no later than July 31.

History of owners

Tattered Cover was founded in 1971. Meskis bought it in 1974 when it was a basement shop and helped expand the brand into a nationally-acclaimed bookstore.

In 1984, she took Colorado to the state’s Supreme Court over a law criminalizing the sales of “sexually oriented material” and won. She challenged another law in 2002 that would have prohibited a person’s right to anonymously purchase books and won that as well, cementing her status as a champion for the First Amendment.

Meskis then sold Tattered Cover in 2015 and retired in 2017. The next owners, Len Vlahos and Kristen Gilligan, later sold the bookstore in 2020 to Colorado-based investment group Bended Page, with Denver’s Kwame Spearman helmed as the CEO until April of last year when he began pursuing politics with a failed mayoral run.

Bended Page then hired Colorado bankruptcy attorney and former Republican congressional candidate Brad Dempsey to lead the company through its financial issues — with court documents showing he earns $10,000 a month plus expenses in lieu of consulting fees.