For more than 20 years, small bookstores have been vanishing, their business models under pressure from large competitors and internet retailers.

In the last several years, though, there are signs that independent bookstores are making a comeback in New York and other cities, in part through innovative financing that gives neighborhoods a stake in the businesses.

A case in point: Jessica Stockton Bagnulo and Rebecca Fitting, the owners of Greenlight Bookstore in Fort Greene, have just opened a new location in a second Brooklyn neighborhood, Prospect Lefferts Garden.

I’m surely not the only bookworm who has fantasized about working in a bookstore: The quiet, convivial atmosphere; the rows of spines with titles you have always meant to read; the enthusiastic conversations about books.