In our recent blog on book marketing ideas for 2025, one of our suggestions was putting yourself out there in the real world. Yes, the daunting landscape known as your community. One of the ways you can do this that will benefit you and the community is to support indie bookstores.
Creating community and building relationships by supporting your favorite bookstore can be a big part of your book marketing strategy. This support is also key to getting your book into these bookstores.
Why You Should Give Some Love to Your Local Bookstore
There are so many reasons to support your local bookstore outside of what it can do for you and your book sales. Keeping indie bookstores afloat allows these valuable community spaces to continue doing what they’re doing. They do more than sell books! They create community by being a space for gathering to relax, explore, and spend time with other book lovers.
These indie bookstores host events for all. They’re also the spaces, when libraries are under threat and book bans are limiting access to literature, that make all types of books available to anyone who wants them. These bookstores love books and their authors more than Amazon, and while they still need to make sales to stay in business, you can see how they offer much more to your community than big online retailers.
So, What Can Authors Do to Help Out Indie Bookstores?
There are many ways you can support indie bookstores that will help keep them thriving in our communities and all of this will also increase your chance of getting your book into a bookstore.
- Firstly, you can encourage your readers to buy local by linking your Buy Now buttons to your own favorite bookstore.
- You can create an Author page on Bookshop.org to support indie bookstores.
- Support them by buying directly from them.
- Show up to events so they keep hosting them. This supports authors as well.
Indie Bookstores Help Build Relationships and Community
When you frequent these spaces, you not only support indie bookstores, you get to know the type of customers they cater to, and familiarize yourself with the staff. This benefits you because it can be an effective part of your overall book marketing strategy. Think of it as networking and market research, with the added benefit of helping these indie bookstores thrive.
Forming relationships and building community increases your network and support. If you want to see your book in a bookstore someday, this is a good place to start. Because it’s extremely unlikely that you can walk in as an unknown author and stranger off the street and expect them to want to sell your book. Indie bookstore owners and their staff care about books and their authors, unlike the giant online retailers they compete with.
Some Tips to Increase Your Chances of Getting Your Book into a Bookstore
Speaking of giant online retailers, don’t walk in and tell them how well your book is doing on Amazon and expect that this will impress them. And, as we mentioned previously, you need to be aware of who the store caters to and their overall brand. They WILL be impressed if you’re aware of this and prove that you support indie bookstores. There are a few other things you can do that will be a big help.
- Offer a professional quality product. This means your book is formatted to professional standards, fits genre conventions, and has been thoroughly edited and polished. It also needs a stand-out cover. You can read more about book covers here, and find out what a professional back cover needs here.
- Make it easy for them. You need to make it easy for them to sell your book by pricing it appropriately for retail and offering the 55% wholesale discount. You should also make it returnable. This eliminates a lot of financial risk for them, making it more likely they will decide to sell your book. These are all options from print-on-demand leader, IngramSpark.
- Be ready to put in marketing effort. Indie bookstores run on tight budgets and have very little room for financial risks. Bookstores also don’t market your book. Their job is to sell it. Let them know you have a marketing plan specific to their location and ask them if they could potentially host an event, like a reading, to boost sales and bring in customers.
When you support indie bookstores, they will support you. This is one of the big benefits of focusing some of your book marketing energy on these small sellers. Amazon doesn’t care if you support them or not and they won’t return the favor by offering a supportive community.
Are You Ready to Support Indie Bookstores?!
Ultimately, supporting your local bookstores is fulfilling and rewarding and can be an easy, stress-free part of your overall book marking strategy. So make that Author page on BookShop, and add those links to your Buy Now buttons on your website. Then, take a trip to your nearest indie bookstore with all of this in mind and see where it leads!
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