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Show Your Local Bookseller Some Love on Independent Bookstore Day
They deserve it now more than ever
This Saturday, April 26th, is Independent Bookstore Day in the United States, a day the America Booksellers Association calls a “national one-day party held the last Saturday in April that celebrates independent bookstores across the country.” Over the past several years, I have written about Independent Bookstore Day, but with a twist: I always wrote about it a week or two after the event. This was not a case of my normal procrastination, but rather because indie bookstores need your support more than just one day a year if they are to survive.
While it’s still true that you should patronize your local bookseller year-round, I’ve changed things up this year for a simple reason: the assault on books and libraries is at an all-time high in the United States and the bigger the turnout for an event the media is already aware of, the better. We need to pack the bookstores so much tomorrow that it will bump even the newest insane DOGE cuts from the top story.
You may think mentioning indie bookstores at the same time as the ongoing attempts at censorship is a bridge too far; after all, the current assault is focused on school and public libraries, not retail businesses. Actually, while we were busy worrying about whether TikTok was…
