Running a cozy little bookshop where readers can meet and connect over their favorite authors is a dream shared by many book nerds. But beyond the romanticized idea, the independent bookstore business is renowned for being risky, which is why most people never get to follow that dream.

There is a creative and popular alternative, however: The Open Book, in the coastal town of Wigtown, Scotland , offers a "bookshop holiday" experience in which guests volunteer to run the bookstore during their one- to two-week stay at the apartment above the shop.

"I think what draws people here is the dream. The kind of 'what if' — 'what if I did this with my life,'" Jessica Fox, one of the founders of The Open Book, explains. "It feels like you're the main character in a movie."

Fox herself turned her "what if" fantasy into reality by swapping her high-stress career in Los Angeles, where she worked as a filmmaker for NASA, for a quieter life as a bookseller in Wigtown.…