How to Support Your Community as a Reader!
If you follow book-centered accounts on social media, you probably see a lot of posts pushing you to avoid Amazon and buy books locally, to donate to book-related causes on Giving Tuesday (after Thanksgiving), to celebrate Independent Bookstore Day (late April), and the list goes on. These are all wonderful things to do, but for a lot of us, these days and messages come and go before we’ve had a chance to really make a plan. Today I want to discuss some ideas for sustainably supporting your community as a reader. If one of these resonates with you, set some time aside this week to try it out!
Planning ahead without leaving the house: Bookshop.org
If you’re not familiar with bookshop.org, they’re an online book retailer that supports independent bookstores by giving a portion of sales revenue to them. You can select your own favorite indie or have them decide. This is the best of both worlds– shopping from the comfort of home but still supporting local indies. We’re all very used to Amazon's free and fast shipping though, so a bit of planning can make this work. I recommend buying early and in batches. So, if you know you have a lot of birthdays to buy for (kids’ friends and classmates, nieces and nephews, etc.), place one large order so that you’re not paying the base price every time you ship. You can also stock up on favorites to pull from when a birthday pops up
A sign inside Storybook Cove, a bookstore in Hanover, MA
Teaching our kids the joy of choosing and gifting
How easy is it to grab a book to gift on your own, without your kids in tow? Shopping with kids isn’t always fun. I have a four-year-old and I want him to experience the joy of selecting gifts for friends and family. At the same time, I’m not interested in bringing him to a toy store or scrolling online with him. Independent bookstores are the best place to start. Kids will enjoy spotting books they have read before and may surprise you with what they select for a friend. It’ll almost certainly cost more than a grab from amazon, but your kid will get so much out of the experience. I will often give one nice hardcover book as a gift, including a gift receipt. I consider the fact that it was hand-selected from a local indie as part of the gift! If your kids are too little for this, buying someone a gift card to your local indie is also a great gift. My son and I have explored two new bookstores this way and I’m not sure we would have found them otherwise. For a long time I didn’t have any indie bookstores closer than a 30 min drive, so I would also drive out once and buy books for every upcoming birthday I could think of. That made the inconvenient trip well-worth it.
Frugal Bookstore from MeetBoston in Boston, MA; Hummingbird Books in Chestnut Hill, Ma
Put your money where you want it
In this economy we all want to save where we can, but I encourage you to allow a splurge when it comes to keeping small businesses alive that you care about. We all experienced this in the pandemic, ordering takeout from our treasured spots when we could have cooked at home. We can’t splurge on everything, but I assume if you’re here reading a blog about books, they are a priority for you! To extend this, consider female-owned and minority-owned bookstores if you can. The above photo (left) is from Frugal Bookstore, a favorite of mine in Boston. In June 2020, Boston’s only Black-owned bookstore found itself in an unprecedented whirlwind as a result of the Black Lives Matter protests. They received several thousand orders seemingly overnight during this time of reckoning for so many Americans. Let’s put that energy in our everyday lives, not just when it’s topical. They also received orders that were mostly for the same search-engine suggested titles. But they have so much more to offer with a collection of many children’s books I’ve never seen anywhere else. More common, but still something to seek out, are female-owned bookstores. The photo on the right is from a Boston area bookstore that’s female-owned.
Barnes & Noble > Target and Amazon
I think most millennial readers have their own special connection to their chain bookstore from growing up. We don’t need to turn away from them! Putting your money into a store like Barnes & Noble supports booksellers, something that stores like Amazon and Target lack.
From the St. Charles Library “Friends of the Library” book sale in St. Charles, IL
Donate Your Books!
Your books, your kids’ books, your husbands books– chances are someone fills your house with more books than you’d like to see around. Donating them can do a lot more than get them out of the house! See which libraries in your area accept donations. These are usually for the small “bookstores” that some libraries have, rather than circulating library books which is a whole separate system. But, libraries can make money off of your donations. My local library sells donated books six days a week for $1-$3 and makes thousands of dollars a year for library programming. All thanks to people who look around their house and say “ugh, I need to free up some space”
What else?
It’s good to remember the advice “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” We’re all going to shop non-indie at times. I have a board book I love to buy for friends when they have babies, but it’s almost impossible to find outside of amazon. So, amazon often gets that sale. But when I remember, I have my local indie order me a couple copies. When the birthday seasons hit (August/September and March for my kid’s friends), I’m good about doing a bookshop.org bulk order, but when a random early January birthday hits after the holiday exhaustion, I’m likely grabbing from Amazon. Doing what we can when we can, is enough.
If you have other tips and ideas to support your community, I would love to hear them: laurenreadsitall@gmail.com
