A Booklover’s Guide to Texas

More on the state’s indie bookstores, storytelling champions, and literary destinations turning the page

On a downtown Austin sidewalk, a sandwich board reads “MAGAZINE DESIGN DRINKS.” Inside the shop, international publications like Apartamento and Popeye line shelves, alongside a coffee counter serving horchata lattes. TOMO Mags opened in December 2025, following the debut of Fine Print in Dallas the previous June. As Texas’ only independent magazine storefronts, these new shops mark a revived interest in artful, coffee-table-book-size media.

“People are investing in magazines not only as information, but as cultural capsules,” says TOMO Mags founder Vico Puentes. “They’re signaling to people: This is what I care about.”

As a 10-year-old, Puentes immigrated from Mexico to Houston. Two decades later, he started selling magazines out of a converted school bus. In Austin, his bright blue storefront has hosted events with The Bitter Southerner and Noema magazineson recent trends toward analog media. “We have all kinds of titles selling because all kinds of people live in Texas,” Puentes says.

Specialty magazines have become a status symbol among the chronically online generation. Fine Print houses niche titles, posters, and prints in a former nail salon in Dallas’ Oak Cliff. Owner Crystal Cobb, a Dallas-Fort Worth native, was exposed to the medium by her artist father. “As soon as I opened the doors, there was a flood of people,” she says. “Whether they followed a specific title, artist, musician, or photographer, they happened to find them in these magazines.”