By Cory Doctorow / Pluralistic / Licensed Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
It's Independent Bookstore Day! I *love* bookstores, especially indies. I'm a recovering bookseller (love you, BakkaPhoenix!) and an inveterate and absurdly optimistic buyer of books - just this weekend, I bought three books at the *LA Times* Festival of Books, from Pages and Octavia's Bookshelf!
Supporting indie bookstores doesn't mean foregoing the convenience of buying online. Libro.fm pioneered a model that lets you nominate your favorite local bookstore, which receives part of the proceeds from every audiobook you buy at Libro (where all the audiobooks are DRM-free).
Libro is celebrating indie bookstores all week with stellar deals on an incredible lineup of audiobooks, from Octavia Butler's *Parable of the Sower* to *Chokepoint Capitalism*, the book Rebecca Giblin and I wrote about how monopolies (including bookstore monopolies like Amazon) destroy the livelihoods of creative workers, and how to fight back.
You can also back your favorite indie bookstore when you shop online at Bookshop.org, who - like Libro - donate a portion of the cost of every book you buy to a nominated local bookseller.
Of course, nothing beats actually *visiting* your local bookstore, browsing the books, reading the shelf-reviews, and talking to knowledgeable, intelligent, passionate booksellers in person. I'm about to embark on a tour for my next novel, *Red Team Blues*, and I'll be stopping at many great indie stores on the way.
Tomorrow, I'll be in San Diego at Mysterious Galaxy Books for a launch with Sarah Gailey. On Wednesday, I'll be in Burbank at Dark Delicacies. On May 5, I'll be in Mountain View with Mitch Kapor at Books, Inc. There are plenty more stops, in PDX, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, DC, Gaithersburg, and all over the UK, finishing in Berlin.
I hope to see you there! Also, my family has asked that you stage an intervention if you see me buying more books while I'm on tour!