On April 27, five Upper Valley bookstores — including Cover to COVER Books, Left Bank Books, Norwich Bookstore, Still North Books & Bar and Yankee Bookshop — joined forces to celebrate the country’s 11th annual Independent Bookstore Day.
Norwich Bookstore co-owner Sam Kaas said Independent Bookstore Day, also known as Indie Bookstore Day, is a relatively recent national holiday that recognizes the unique relationship between consumers and independent bookstores — one he said cannot be replicated by larger franchises such as Barnes & Noble or Amazon. The day provided an opportunity for bookshops around the Upper Valley to collaborate and honor their contributions to the community, he added.
“It was actually an acquaintance of mine in San Francisco who started it,” Kaas said. “It was modeled on Record Store Day. In a world where you can get music on Spotify, you can go into a record store and buy physical records. That was the whole idea. There’s a lot of kinship between record stores and bookstores.”
According to Still North assistant book manager Andy Lindquist, the face-to-face appeal of buying physical books continues to draw consumers toward independent bookstores, which provide a more intimate connection between communities and privately-owned businesses — one that is not built on financial gain or profit. Lindquist said the relationship between customers and independent bookstores is instead formed primarily through the support of the surrounding community.
“We’re really lucky that we have a lot of people in the community who want to support us,” Lindquist said. “Being independently-started lets us recognize that the reason that we can succeed is because people want us to. We do our best to earn that trust. It’s not something we take for granted.”
According to Kaas, support goes both ways. In the face of hardship — such as the COVID-19 pandemic or extreme weather — employees of independent bookstores in the Upper Valley have sacrificed personal time and goods to help their customers — even when the community’s needs “have nothing to do with books.”
“We’re able to really offer personalized and curated service,” Kaas explained. “ … When the floods hit last summer, we put out a call on social media to tell the community that we have electrical power. If you need a phone charger, if you need to use the Wi-Fi or if you need to just sit and talk with somebody because you’ve had a rough day, we will act as a community gathering space in the same way we act as a business that sells things.”
Kaas and Lindquist both said local bookstores hosted Independent Bookstore Day events to acknowledge the genuine connection between book-buyers and independent booksellers.
Kaas said one of the more anticipated events of Independent Bookstore Day was the Upper Valley Bookstore Crawl: an activity that encouraged participants to migrate from store to store to gather discounts and win prizes.
“If people were able to visit all five bookstores in one day, they got entered to win a big prize, which was a bunch of tote bags, stickers, gift cards to all the stores and a Still North sweatshirt,” Lindquist said.
Other events included an author visit from local writer Sarah Stewart Taylor — who helped out and discussed books at the Yankee Bookstore in the morning and Norwich Bookstore in the afternoon — smaller giveaways, scavenger hunts and discounted shop items.
According to Left Bank Books owner Rena Mosteirin, the store had free snacks and stayed open an hour later than usual to allow more people to complete the bookstore crawl. The Norwich Bookstore, meanwhile, hosted a scavenger hunt in which the finder of a golden ticket won a year’s worth of free audiobooks from their partners at Libro.fm — a service that allows customers to buy audiobooks through their local bookstores, Kaas said.
According to Kaas, Independent Bookstore Day acknowledged the sacrifices and hardships each bookstore has faced throughout the years — from COVID-19 to the rise of Amazon. The day also allowed for a broader appreciation of indie bookstores in the Upper Valley.
“[The day] definitely gave people a great feel for the five independent bookstores here in the Upper Valley,” Kaas said. “You walk into any of them and you can see how they’re all on the same wavelength but have different things going on. It’s the spirit of independence but through an internal connection.”
