Indie Bookstore Day and how to order indie books

Written By R.E. Bellesmith

Storyhouse Bookpub in Des Moines, Iowa.

This weekend — the last weekend in April — is Indie Bookstore Day! A day selected about a decade ago to celebrate locally owned bookstores.

I love indie bookstores and that love has only grown as I get older and get to know the people who run these niche shops. In my (still very limited) experience, a good indie bookstore is a place you can find the latest buzzy book appropriate to that store’s specialty, but — once you’ve got that — you can dive into a curated selection of texts. A good indie bookstore reflects the people who operate the store and the people who walk through.

Indie bookstores are often the only physical places you can walk into the store and find a local indie author too. Most of us won’t get our books into Barnes & Noble or Target, but often times a local bookshop will be kind enough to sell our book on consignment. Doing so, ideally further helps make local bookstore more unique to their communities and helps indie authors point people to a specific store to buy a book.

Right now there’s (as far as I know) only three bookstores where you can walk through the front door and find one of my novels on the shelf:

Light Keeper Chroncile: The Unspoken Prophecy among other indie books at Schuler Books & Music in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

If you do find yourself in any of those shops over the course of this weekend, you should be able to find at least one of my books to snag while you’re there.

If you find yourself in another indie bookstore, however, there’s still a way you can get my books.

Truly, most indie bookstores will order a book if you request it. You’d just have to say, “I’d like you to order a copy of The Wilderlands by R.E. Bellesmith,” and they should be able to look up the book and order it.

In the event that doesn’t work, most books have something called an ISBN. This stands for International Standard Book Number, and is exactly what it sounds like, a number assigned to a book to make it easier to look it up. Here are the two numbers for my currently released books.

Light Keeper Chronicle: The Unspoken Prophecy - 9798218290061
The Wilderlands - 9798990536975

Now, if you’re looking to participate in book consumerism this weekend but also don’t want to leave your house, the website Bookshop.org carried most books and puts some of its money to support local bookstores. Plugin my author name, ISBN, or book titles there and you can also order there.

At the very least, if you do find yourself going out with the sole intent of spending money at an indie bookstore this weekend, maybe check and see if they have a local authors section. Maybe check what’s in stock there, and maybe ask the booksellers if there’s anything they recommend from local authors!

*****

If you happen to be in the Des Moines area this weekend (er, specifically the day I’m posting this — April 26 — since I got to this later than I’d like) come see me at a Storyhouse Bookpub event held at Raygun at 6 p.m. today! The address is 505 E. Grand Ave., Des Moines and it’s just $5 to get in.

R.E. Bellesmith
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