my books |
The Los Angeles Times has a story by Dorany Pineda,
about independent bookstores holding Gofunde campaigns to hang on during this
extended pandemic. This is particularly
bad in the LA area with the unexpected severity, given the warmer climate. The store in question is Brentwood’s Diesel.
According to a linked story, thriller author James
Patterson (“Along Came a Spider”) has donated $500000 to well-organized fund to
save bookstores. He reportedly partnered with Reese Witherspoon and wound up with
a “saveindiebookstores.com” site, but Squarespace reports that the website has expired
(has not been renewed).
I have visited a couple of indie bookstores, including
one in rural Maryland last January before the full extent of the coming pandemic
was appreciate (see Jan. 20, 2020, the visit took place Jan 16).
I have, since 2012, gotten numerous calls from my own
POD publishers about buying copies of my books in volume and setting up events
in bookstores myself, rather than “lazily” depending on Amazon and Barnes and
Noble. That would also mean credit card
processing myself (which technically I have on one of my Wordpress sites). In that case, support of independent
bookstores would make sense.
The idea also goes along with the idea that authors (and
independent websites) should show commercial viability if they are to remain in
the public space, even if the owners’ motivation is personalized speech and not
just financial. That’s an idea that may be starting to get traction. People need jobs, not just speech and ideology!
John Fish had been working with Booktuber (and Bryan
Stevenson) in Canada and the US before the pandemic. Here's a funny story about the Capitol Hill Bookstore in Washington DC,
No comments:
Post a Comment