My Independent Bookstore Day Survival Guide

Many Saturday mornings you can find me in bed doing a lot of book browsing on Libby, Net Galley and Kindle Unlimited. So getting out of bed to get dressed (of course into my Born to Read, Forced to Work t-shirt) to go to Subtext, the Independent bookstore down the street, was a great excuse to force myself to move and talk with people a little bit.

Okay, the allure of free coffee and donuts helped a lot too.

I seriously love independent bookstores. However I do have some guidelines that I make sure to follow in order for it to be a pleasant experience.

1) Stay in my budget. Unless you have a recipe for sauteeing paperback books I am going to need enough money for next weeks groceries too. 

2) Make a list of books I want to be looking for.  Otherwise I can get lost very easily in children's picture books when I want to be building my collection of horror books. But I convince myself the children's books are for my nephew....

3) Making note of books that sound interesting but are out of my price range right now. They are great books to keep an eye open for at used bookstores and libraries. It might be a dream scenario to live in a library or bookstore but this is hard to explain to a landlord if I can't make rent because of all the books I bought.

4) Make peace with the fact that I can't go to all the featured stores for independent bookstore day....especially if I got my tickets to see Avengers this afternoon.

But I seriously love that I live in a community that values bookstores so much. Some of my favorite stores in the Twin Cities that I know I want to try to go to today are: Uncle Hugo, Dreamhaven, Magers and Quinn and Eat My Words. I have already been to Milkweed and Subtext this week. The Twin Cities has a very vibrant literary community that I am proud of!