If you were the guy who had one too many at Auckland's Golden Dawn bar the other night, who woke up wondering why there was a bunch of book titles typed into his phone – mystery solved.

People ask Jenna Todd what to read all the time.

"I don't think he will even remember," she says, this teeny-tiny woman in a belted-at-the-waist vintage wool dress bought in a shop called Retro Sheila on Australia's Gold Coast.

Even her clothes have a story.

"The guy who owns the shop used to go out with Paul Burrell, Princess Diana's butler. I was there for three hours, and I went back again the next day."

Jenna Todd is New Zealand's Young Book Retailer of the Year. But she is also a DJ, a photographic artist and maker of music videos. She knits, she collects vintage clothes and her friends fly her to Canada to photograph their weddings.

"I've always got something else going on. I just finished writing a piece about The Bachelor. Its focus is on being a feminist, obsessed with The Bachelor. I'm very obsessed. I love it, but it's a conflicting love."

On the day of this interview, Todd has listened to a podcast of Reese Witherspoon reading from the new Harper Lee novel. The day before, she whipped through her book-club book (Katherine Mansfield's Miss Brill) on-screen, in her lunch break. Her 29-year-old world is digital and driven. So why is she building a hard-copy career? Didn't books die already?

Andrea Foley and Antony O'Connell were 17 and split up when they discovered they were going to become parents. They were Catholic high school students who met as Air Training Corps cadets.

Todd was born into her grandparent's Dunedin house. Her dad lived around the corner.

"I was born in September and my mum still finished sixth form and did seventh form by correspondence. Mum bought a house when she was 19, and we moved to south Dunedin, and we could kind of afford to do that. And we just grew up there."

Today, she has three half-sisters. Two on her dad's side, and one – Maeve, aged four – on her mum's.

"My family's a little bit crazy… there's lots of people everywhere."

As a child, Todd was identified as an advanced reader. But by the time she got to Otago Girls' High, she couldn't be bothered. She needed a tutor for seventh-form English, and she hated writing essays.

"I was very distracted. I only liked doing what I liked doing. I completely excelled in photography and art. I used to wag everything to hide in the dark room.

"And I was really tired all the time, because I used to watch so much TV in my room all night. Really terrible TV."

She had already decided to become a photographer – she took a disposable camera on her standard four camp and a teacher told her the pictures were good. At the Dunedin School of Art, she finished top of her department.

"I ended up making films for my final year. Weird, immersive digital works about YouTube.

"I did these projects where I'd just photograph the mundane. I did a lot of self-portraiture. I photocopied my face every day for months on a colour copier. I was really into instant art."

Documentation was important. She meticulously recorded first and last names, dates and places, "because one day I wouldn't remember them".

"I had this very freaky Leonardo DiCaprio clear file. I even cut out the movie times for when Titanic was on."

When Jenna met Stuart Harwood, he was planning a year in London and she was planning a year in Korea. They flew out to their respective OE's on the same day in October, reuniting in 2010.

Dunedin was now too small. Melbourne? Or Auckland? Harwood, drummer for Paquin, Proton Beast and Anthonie Tonnon, wanted to become an electronics engineer, and in New Zealand he could get a student allowance. Auckland won.

"He's a big reader," says Todd. "He has to read every night before he goes to sleep. That's how I got into reading again. When we first started seeing each other, he was like, 'Do you mind if I bring a book over?'"

She was working in Dunedin's vintage clothing store Modern Miss, spending her behind-the-counter downtime drawing pictures. Harwood suggested she read. She remembers, one day, finishing the indescribably awful rat scene from American Psycho, and then having to answer a customer's query like a completely normal person.

Books transport people. They change people. They make people think differently. In Todd's world, books are far from dead.

"Look at this craze for adult colouring books. It really is showing a yearning for the tangible and getting away from screens."

In Auckland, Todd thought she'd work in an art gallery or a library. A girlfriend of a friend was managing Mt Eden's Time Out. There had been a vacancy, but it had just been filled. Two days later, a phone call – the person who'd got the job had turned it down.

"I'd never been to Mt Eden before. I had my map, I parked on yellow lines and I said the magic words to the owner, Wendy, which were 'Margaret Atwood'.

"When I started here, I thought I'd read heaps. But ohhh, being a reader as a bookseller is so different to being a 'reader' reader. A lot of people don't even think of the title of a book, or when it was written, or whether it's the author's first book or their 20th."

The counter at Time Out is piled with Lee's Go Set a Watchman. The worldwide embargo on the novel has just lifted. They're also unpacking The Predictions. Kiwi author Bianca Zander is coming in to sign copies. The front door to the narrow store in the middle-class suburb opens constantly. Women with kids; young men in cardigans. Todd knows many by name. Even when she's reading something she loathes, she's mentally listing the customers who will love it.

Sometimes, she reminds people they've already read the book they're about to buy. "I say, 'Yeah, you bought it three years ago – it had a different cover. Past me would have sold it to past you.'"

This – and a record sales year – is why Todd is the 2015 Young Book Retailer of the Year.

"We had our best year ever in 2014. We weren't really sure why. 2013 was good. Post-recession it was actually a great year. We thought, 'Oh, it's [Man Booker Prize winner] The Luminaries.' And then, last year, there was no Luminaries. So what was the reason? Our sibling stores have been following similar trends with percentage rises in sales figures. It seems like the bookstores that are doing well are doing very well.

"I don't feel like it's a sunset industry. We're very, very lucky with where we're situated and the disposable income our customers have. Actually, it's not even the disposable income. It's that our customers see the true value in spending money here. They really value that community space."

She's sick of feeling angry about people who buy books online.

"People have their own money. If you can justify why you do it – good on you."

Her own books go into piles. "Pile A is a priority pile. Pile B is a little bit sad and will probably just go into the bookshelf when I'm tidying up. There's still hope for Pile B, but it's waning."

At any given moment, she's juggling three titles: one main book, one or two she has just started, and always a music book, because she does reviews for Auckland alternative radio station bFM.

Her own musical weakness is the 80s. As DJ Frances Houseman, she likes to open with a little Billy Idol or Cyndi Lauper. Nothing too obvious. No Come On Eileen.

"I was born to 17-year-olds in 1985."

For her 30th birthday in September, Harwood will build her an electric bike, and her friends will sing karaoke.

"I want a full few hours of Queen. Not the typical ones like We Will Rock You or whatever, but The Show Must Go On, One Vision.

"I love karaoke and that comes from living in Korea, where I taught English. Karaoke was big. I got really used to singing soberly at all hours of the day."

Not knowing exactly what the future holds is, says the almost-30-year-old Todd, okay. She and Harwood have just moved into a rental of their own, with a cat called Eleanor the Catton (its creamy back is splodged with tan circles – an improbable fur replica of the cover of The Luminaries, first launched at Time Out). Life is cheap wine and dumplings with friends, and a job in a bookstore punctuated with projects.

"People ask me if I could own Time Out. It's too big to think about; it feels too adult. But I could imagine it maybe being a collective ownership or something. Because I see how important it is in the community."

At author events, says Todd, she makes a point of telling writers she sells books. Her role is recognised in their inscriptions. "Keep fighting the good fight," signed Adam Johnson, in her copy of The Orphan Master's Son. "Thank you," wrote essayist and comedian David Sedaris, "for making me rich."