When you order new books on Bookshop.org you are supporting your favorite indie bookstores with each purchase. It's encouraging each time I log on to the site to see the $ donation amount to brick and mortar bookstores going up and up as we're all stocking up our to-read stash to help keep ourselves sane.
I woke up in the middle of the night last night to the sound of a large owl hooting in the oak trees behind my bedroom window. Owls being associated with wisdom and prosperity, seemed to me perfectly in tune with my thoughts of an urgency for collating and highlighting books by local authors, especially during this trying time.
One thing brick and mortar indie storefronts are not massively keen on is filling the front of store space, or any much space with a bunch of books by local authors, in most part, I've come to understand, because of the real estate value of shelf space. It's not easy for bookstores to make much of a profit and the local author takes a back seat to books pushed by the big publishing houses.
And so it's pretty fantastic to stock my virtual store on Bookshop.org with titles from as many Sonoma County authors as I can find. There are other authors I tried to include here, but each book must have distribution that works with this exciting new bookseller's program in order to be featured, sold and delivered to your doorstep.
What's so great about Bookshop.org is that it's as easy and convenient to shop on as Amazon and yet its mission is to support and preserve the physical bookstores we love to browse in person.
Click here to browse my store within a store, especially the Sonoma County titles, many of which have been written by writers I know and admire personally.
While we are all doing our best to buy local, it's super important to promote and support the arts in our community and it's good to remember that literary art takes many months and years to produce. A book by a local author is a small business in itself.
I'd love it if you share this post with your social media friends. Let's get Bookshop.org on more people's radar.
Oh, and don't forget to review your favorite reads on Bookshop.org, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com. Reviews are extraordinarily helpful.
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