$50 Gift certificate to use at Books Inc. to stock your library! Books Inc. is a locally owned and operated independent bookseller with 10 locations in California. Books Inc.?s origin dates back to the Gold Rush Days of 1851 when Anton Roman struck it rich in Shasta City, California and set himself up in business selling books. That small bookstore was moved, bought, sold, burned, rebuilt, renamed and became Books Inc., as we know it today, in 1946.