I know, I know. The holidays are coming up way too fast. It’s the season of gratitude, and yet your mind is all caught up in that holiday gift-giving extravaganza that begins…well, let’s not go there.
This year, how about mixing it up, gratitude with gift list, by showing some love to your favorite independent bookshop? On Saturday, Nov. 29, Indies First brings authors into local bookstores to help hand-sell books. I’m excited to be joining Eowyn Ivey and Don Rearden, playing bookseller at Fireside Books in Palmer.
Saturday is the second annual Indies First celebration, an effort launched by bestselling author Sherman Alexie and taken up by the American Booksellers Association. The plan, as Alexie explains it:”We book nerds will become booksellers. We will make recommendations. We will practice nepotism and urge readers to buy multiple copies of our friends’ books…I think the collective results could be mind-boggling (maybe even world-changing)…What could be better than spending a day hanging out in your favorite hometown indie, hand-selling books you love to people who will love them too and signing a stack of your own?”
I’m with Alexie – not much could be better. Indies First plays right into one of my secret but (usually) suppressed urges: to tug the sleeves of strangers whenever I spot titles I love on the shelves of a bookstore.
So mark your calendars and devote a portion of Small Business Saturday to visiting one of those great little bookshops where there’s a lot more going on than just monetary transactions. And if you’re in the Anchorage area, head on over to Palmer to Fireside Books. Eowyn, Don, and I would love to see you!
independent authors cooperative Running Fox Books, Deb
Vanasse has authored more
than a dozen books. Her most recent is Cold
Spell, a novel that “captures the harsh beauty of the terrain as well as
the strain of self-doubt and complicated family bonds,” according to Booklist. Deb lives and works on Hiland Mountain outside of Anchorage, Alaska, and at a cabin near the
Matanuska Glacier. Portions of this post have been published previously.
post relevant to Alaska’s literary community? Email 49writers (at) gmail.com or
debvanasse (at) gmail.com.