Skip to main content

400+ Authors Will be in 256 Indie Bookstores Next Saturday

There’s a indiesFirst[1]good chance that you’re going to be busy shopping on the Saturday after Thanksgiving this year,but if you have time you might want to stop by your local indie bookstore and meet a local author.

30 November 2013 is Small Business Saturday, and the American Bookseller Association is marking the occasion with a new program called Indies First. They have coordinated with 257 indie bookstores across the US to bring local authors in and volunteer as booksellers.

The stores are spread across over 40 states and the district of Columbia. In my area alone there are 4 participating bookstores (5 if you count Richmond), including Politics and Prose in DC. All will have at least one author behind the counter on that Saturday, and a lucky few will have as many as nine local authors (or more).

indie first map

The list of participating authors includes indies as well as a number of best-selling and well know names.James Patterson will be selling books in Classic Bookshop in Palm Beach, FL, and you will find Cheryl Strayed, the author of Wild, at Broadway Books in Portland, OR. And Elliott Bay Books in Seattle may have hit the jackpot in terms of author participation; Sherman Alexie, Maria Semple, and Jonathan Evison will all be at that bookstore.

In the Los Angeles, area, Paul Vitagliano and Cecil Castellucci will beat Skylight Books in Los Feliz; Antoine Wilson at Diesel in Brentwood; Naomi Hirahara will be at Book’Em Mysteries in South Pasadena; and Meredith Maran will be among the authors at Book Soup in West Hollywood.

You can find a map and a list of participating bookstores on the Indiebound website. You might want to wait until next week to finalize your plans; participating bookstores and authors are still being added to the list in droves. In the past 4 days since the LA Times reported on this story the number of participating bookstores more than doubled, and it could increase even more.

LA Times

Similar Articles


Comments


Becki November 20, 2013 um 4:32 pm

My local public library is also hosting 26 authors (plus selling another local author’s book) on Small Business Saturday. Called the Local Author Showcase, it features both traditional and self-published authors. This is the first year we’re doing this, and yes, it was planned before we had heard of this Indie effort. Of course, bookstores don’t always tell libraries what they have planned. There are no bookstores in our city (and only used bookstores in our county), so there is no competition here!

Nate Hoffelder November 20, 2013 um 8:32 pm

Lucky you! I wish my local library would do that.

Becki November 23, 2013 um 1:45 pm

You can always make the suggestion for next year. 🙂 (Disclaimer: I work for my local public library.) We do make an effort to promote our local authors, and are always willing to set up signing dates for them, but I know that not all public libraries do this. Many I’ve spoken to are not willing to work with self-published authors, which I think is a shame. Their boards are too caught-up in the old reality of self-published books all being junk, and aren’t willing to give the new reality a chance.


Write a Comment