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Hey, everybody, it’s Buy Indie Day!
May 1st has been declared Buy Indie Day. The idea: buy one book—paperback, hardcover, audiobook, whatever you want!—at an independent bookstore near you.
Here’s my suggestion. Head out to that independent bookstore near you and buy Jessica Valenti’s The Purity Myth, which I was supposed to write about at length this week and didn’t get to. It is awesome.
And if you’ve still got money burning a hole in your pocket after that (and really, who doesn’t have extra cash these days?) today would be a perfect day to pre-order Lessons from the Fat-o-sphere from somewhere like Powell’s or my own local feminist indie, Women and Children First. At this point, pre-ordering is practically just ordering, because holy crap, THE BOOK WILL BE AVAILABLE ON TUESDAY!
If your favorite local indie has a website, please leave a link in comments.
If you are in the Baton Rouge area, check out Cottonwood Books. The owner’s family is friends with my dad’s family. It’s small, but I can always find several somethings worth buying. I’m sad I can’t visit any more since I moved.
LOL, I was just thinking about hitting up this used/indy bookstore near my house. Now that I know that it’s National Buy Indie Day, I don’t see how I have any choice but to go now!
I plan on ordering your book from Town Center Books when I feel better.
Can’t wait to read this book! Here’s a link to the Brookline Booksmith in Brookline, MA and the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, MA.
http://www.brooklinebooksmith.com/
http://www.harvard.com/
Two bookstores in the Ann Arbor area:
On campus:
Shaman Drum
(Lets see if my html works…)
I pre-ordered the book from Amazon.co.uk months ago, and they informed me it was in the mail last Wednesday. Whilst Lessons from the Fat-o-Sphere might end up in Dutch bookstores some day some time… I’m afraid I couldn’t wait. So much for my indie cred. (Wait… I didn’t have any to begin with..)
Well, links didn’t work. This isn’t as elegant, but it should get the job done. For your book needs in Ann Arbor:
Shaman Drum
http://www.shamandrum.com/bookshop/
And, my favorite:
Nicola’s Books
http://www.nicolasbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp
Kate are you telling me I need to shop on Etsy today I GUESS I CAN MAKE THAT SACRIFICE
And in a bad stroke of convergence, today is the school district fundraiser at B&N, where my kid has to play background strings music for a couple of hours and part of the proceeds for the day’s sales go to the school. Sigh.
Sorry to hog all the posts — but you can order it from our local indie, and if this link works, you can see what comes up if you search “fat-o-sphere” at Nicola’s Books. She lists it as “we can get it in a day.” I don’t know if they ship; they might.
http://www.nicolasbooks.com/NASApp/store/Search
Ah, my link didn’t take you to the completed search. Sorry, I’ll quit hogging the posts!
Anyway, I’ll go into the store and order it in person so that I can get the staff interested in it too.
This is so going up on the Bust blog today.
St. Louis Shapelings!
Spike the cat from Left Bank Books says: BUY INDIE TODAY (also every day when you are buying books).
http://leftbankbooks.indiebound.com/
Which is not to say that Pudd’n Head Books should be forgotten in STL because they are hosting The Queen:
http://puddnheadbooks.com/
Oh never mind, it’s about buying indie books, not about buying everything indie I can get my hands on. Damn.
I just wanted to comment that I LOOOOVE this blog/site/world! I stumbled across it trying desperately to avoid doing any actual work online as I nurse a wee hangover with Diet Pepsi & cinnamon & sugar covered almonds. I can promise I’ll be back often! Thanks for making me feel a tad better about my body….maybe I’ll achieve happiness someday.
SM, I was about to run to Etsy too. I HAVE PERMISSION. Except now I don’t. Boo.
Kate, can I have a license to shop as much as I want?
I pre-ordered Lessons from the Fat-O-Sphere from Powell’s yesterday. Yay!
cereselle, I’m glad I’m not the only one. I’ll give you permission if you give it to me. :-)
*looks around* Huh? What? Sorry, I was busy looking at Jane Bonbon… :)
Sweet Machine, you officially have permission from me to extend Indie Day to Indie Clothing Day.
(How’s that?)
EVERYONE has permission to order from Jane Bonbon. The Queen has spoken. You’ll have to work out the rest of etsy for yourselves, but you seem to be doing a good job of it anyway.
Excellent.
Rats. I cannot afford Jane Bonbon at this time.
I really have to get my butt in gear and get my own etsy store up. I have fabric, I have designs, I just need to get started sewing.
I did just buy something from Etsy. :) Now that I have discovered it, I’m afraid it will suck away all my future earnings.
Speaking of which, LOOK AT THE PURSES OMG.
Um, wait, this was something about books, right?
Here in Baltimore: Ukazoo
In Chicago, well…Oak Park:
The Book Table
It’s worth either the Blue or Green Line ride to go there I’m telling you!
While you guys are in Philly, city of my heart (Why did I have to move to the Bay area THIS year? Why couldn’t I wait till NEXT year? Rats.), you should go to The Last Word Bookshop. It’s in West Philly, a few blocks from the Rotunda, on 40th street between Walnut and Locust. It’s also a short (and gorgeous) walk down through UPenn’s campus via Locust Walk to the White Dog Cafe, which is a long-standing independent restaurant on Sansom Street (3420) with a bent for local activism and yummy food. Especially brunch!
Ok, now I’m jealous and wish I could come.
Oh! And also! If you happen to be near Rittenhouse Square, check out Whodunnit? on Walnut, between 19th and 20th. This indie bookstore specializes in mysteries, of all types and genres. A favorite game of mine was to ask the guy for strange kinds of mystery novels. “I’m looking for something noir-esque but set in the country.”
He, of course, can come up with an answer for whatever you want.
Damn. There are times when living in Suburbia, USA really sucks… such as when I want to find an indie bookstore. Closest one I know of is half an hour’s drive away, and I can’t drive for medical reasons. *sigh*
Sing, O Google, of Abednego Book Shoppe…
For Long Island, NY, there is Book Revue, a huge independent books store in the middle Huntington, with free parking about a block away.
If you are in Western Massachusetts, it doesn’t exactly fit the bill, but the League of Women Voters is having a book sale on the green in Amherst all weekend.
And don’t forget that Saturday is Free Comic Book Day! Comic book stores are almost always independantly owned and if thre is a medium that is under appreciated it is the graphic novel. Say what you will about heavy literature, but I like my books to have pictures.
/Unless it’s Nabokov
//Russian Lit Major
///Slashies!
You all can totally order from Changing Hands, my favorite local (and biggest and oldest in the state!) independent bookstore.
I think they carry your book, Kate, and I know they have other various second-hand and new feminist and political titles.
Also, I know the owner and her family (and all the bosses are women!) so supporting them is a double whammy: independent bookstore and female-fronted businesses.
peggynature mentioned powell’s but didn’t link it – so here it is.
powell’s city of books is colossal – but independent!
If you’re in Tucson, you need to check out Antigone Books, http://www.antigonebooks.com. They’re an indie feminist bookstore with a huge GLBT section and also a large selection of literary and historical finger puppets (I have Dorothy Parker).
If you’re in Denver, try the West Side Book Annex, http://www.westsidebooks.com. They do mostly used and rare books, and have stayed in business on West 32nd for quite a long time while the rest of the neighborhood is being devoured by trendy little boutiques and shit.
Here’s another Boston area indie:
http://www.portersquarebooks.com
Looks like you can buy online from them, too (including Lessons . . . which says “usually ships in 1 to 5 days” :)
“For Long Island, NY, there is Book Revue, a huge independent books store in the middle Huntington, with free parking about a block away. ”
Holy shit– I grew up there and I remember Book Revue in the 70s and 80s before its big renovation. One of my three all-time favorite bookstores. Whiled away countless hours browsing and hanging out there– and that was before they had a cafe.
But now I live in San Francisco, so I have to give a shout out to one of my two other all-time favorite bookstores, Green Apple Books:
http://www.greenapplebooks.com/cgi-bin/mergatroid/index.html
We call it “The Bad Place” because we always spend so much goddamned money there.
Reiter’s Books – Washington, DC!
There’s no better place to show your support that at DC’s oldest, local
independent, family-owned & operated bookstore, Reiter’s Books (1990 K St. NW (entrance on 20th St.)
Uh… is this a bad place to say that I’ve already read your book because I just happened to notice a copy on the “new arrivals” rack at my library yesterday? I did a major double take when I saw it, but it’s definitely the real deal.
It was excellent (I read the whole thing in one sitting last night) and I’m still going to buy it, of course, just thought it was funny that someone at the library apparently messed up and put it out too early or something.
Crazy timing–I just got home to MA yesterday and had a Harvard Book Store shopping trip planned for this evening! Now I have permission to spend even more money than I was going to! (Does it count if I buy used books?)
Reiter’s Books – Washington, DC!
Oh dang, I’ve never been here!
Shoutout to P&P, though. The cutest goddamn boy helped me pick out a Love & Rockets book last time I was in. He was completely wrong but I don’t care, I still want to go back and talk comics with him and make dopey eyes.
Ooo not only will I be buying Indie Books, but I will be stimulating the economy.
Hehehe stimulating…..
Powell’s already gets most of my book business. But I did buy Feed Me and Yes Means Yes from Borders, just to nudge them into ordering more such things.
And I will be haunting Powell’s on Tuesday to see if your book is there.
Many of you probably know these, but my favorites in NYC:
Housing Works, where I’m a volunteer- proceeds go to housing for people with HIV. Also a great spot for concerts, free comedy, readings.
http://www.housingworks.org/social-enterprise/bookstore-cafe/
and Bluestockings, a feminist collective:
http://bluestockings.com/
And, from my time in Western Mass, the adorable Montague Book Mill: “Books you don’t need in a place you can’t find”
http://www.montaguebookmill.com/
Modern Times, http://www.mtbs.com, in the ever increasingly hipster Mission. This is an old school rad bookstore, I really hope they made it. If I wasn’t so unemployed and broke, I would make an effort to buy from them. As it is, I buy nothing.
Hey It, I think I went to a party at Montague Book Mill. Must have been 20 years ago, but it seems like it must have been the place.
Ahahahahahahaha *choke* *wheeze* hahahahahahaha local independent bookstore hee hee hee hahahahaha omg that’s hilarious. Ahem. No, my local “bookstore” is Walmart.
And I hate to rant on someone else’s blog, but goddamn, am I tired of this privileged middle-class bullshit activism of going out and buying something on a specific day. If I had enough money to buy a book today, I would spend it on food.
Damn, I wish I’d seen this.
You know guys, my husband works in a large chain bookstore. Avoiding them doesn’t do a whole lot to hurt the bottom line of the large chains, but it does make job security that much harder for the minimum wage workers. It really hurts to hear you all slagging off on the chains, because without his income from the large evil corporation, we’d be homeless. Indie stores have never kept a roof over my head.
Things have been kinda shaky around here because his district isn’t making it’s numbers, and you can bet there’s no other minimum wage job for him to fall back on if the store decides to drop him, and it will be nearly impossible for us to get government assistance since I can’t work.
Something to think about as you avoid the local Books-A-Million.
Oh, I LOVE the Book Mill!!
Godless Heathen, I think most of us buy books from chains most of the time (at least, I do). But supporting smaller, quirkier businesses so they don’t go out of business is a nice thing to do, too, if you can.
oops, I missed this… but I try to buy indie when I can!
if any of you do stop by, as per PendulousBeast’s suggestion, the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge (which is AWESOME), do stroll around & check out some of the more specialized indie bookstores in the area, including Grollier’s Poetry Shop, Globe Travel Books, Harvard University Press Shop, Raven Used Books (specializing in scholarly books), Shoenhof’s (sp?) foreign books, & a little further out but still within a 3-4 block radius of Harvard Book Store, Revolutionary Books, the Communist bookstore.
Politics and Prose! Isn’t that a hard core blast from the past. Wow…
Reiter’s too man….
Good memories, good memories.
No reflection on you — I know you’re just passing on the
announcement. But I wish the folks who declare these
“National Whatever” days would realize that large
percentages of the population live where it isn’t
possible. My town of 30,000 used to have
B. Dalton, Hastings, and the independent GreenSpray
Books. I loved that store; spent about $75.00 per month
there.
Now, all we have is Hastings, half of which is given over
to DVDs, and the small selections at KMart or Wal-Mart.
I’d love to support independent anything (and do, when-
ever possible), but the options are becoming fewer and
fewer.