As both a reader and an author, I love indie bookstores. There’s such a unique charm to each individual one I visit and every time I walk through the doors, I can feel the love and devotion to novels. Not to mention, my local indie bookstores have been absolutely instrumental in building my growing career as a writer. Old Firehouse Books and Tattered Covers were the first bookstores to sell my book and they’re actually still selling them over a year after my book’s debut, which is incredible. Most chain bookstores would’ve stopped shelving my book eight months ago.

While there’s certainly benefits to ordering books from larger chains or websites (particularly with costs), independent booksellers are indispensable to not just your local book community, but to your overall community as a whole. If you’re lucky enough to have an indie bookstore in your area, you should try your best to dedicate your book-shopping to them. Here are all of my reasons why, but if you have any more I’d love if you would email your reasons to me or tweet at me and I’ll be happy to add them to this blog post:

Better for Local Economy

Hey do you like it when the place you live at is sustainable and also a good place to live? Well believe it or not, your local independent bookstore helps with that! In fact shopping at any local store instead of a big chain super-center can help boost your local economy and supports your community. According to Indiebound.org, if you spend $100 at a locally-owned business then $52 of that money stays with your community. This is compared to spending $100 at a national chain where only $13.00 of that stays in your community and spending $100 online with a remote vendor where approximately $0.00 goes to benefit your community. I don’t know about you, but $0.00 doesn’t sound like a whole lot to me.

Independent bookstores also create higher-paying jobs for the members of your community, which is great and also benefits your local economy because that’s how jobs work. When people have money, they spend that money. I know. Economics are wild. However, a job at your local bookstore also benefits your local book nerds who are looking for a career in the book industry by giving them that firsthand experience at the ground level.

Kind and Dedicated Customer Service

Indie bookstore employees are the best! Their business thrives off of making a personal connection with their audience so they can curate their inventory based on your community’s reading and so, 9 times out of 10, indie bookstores’ customer service is always exemplary. I regularly have fantastic discussions with my hometown bookstore’s employees about Star Wars books and other upcoming novels. When I visited Phoenix, AZ for 36 hours in January, I made it a point to stop in at the Changing Hands bookstore and had a fantastic experience. The employees were kind enough to answer some of my questions about the area in addition to my general book queries and even let me hang out at their coffee bar for a couple hours until my hotel room was ready. It was easily the highlight of my trip thanks to the employee’s kindness and I can’t wait to go back one day to visit that adorable bookstore again.

I’m sure chain bookstores can offer the same experience, but depending on the size and demand of the store you might not always get that personal touch that indie bookstore employees usually provide.

Sidenote: If your local indie bookstore is super duper busy (like they usually are around the holidays), maybe don’t bother the employees too much with idle conversation. They’ve got a thousand things to worry about. Save the chit-chat for slower time periods or while purchasing your books!

Better Support for Authors (especially for indie authors)

For both indie and traditionally published authors, local bookstores are often the starting block for a solid writing career. Independent bookstores thrive from in-store events such as author signings, Q&A’s, readings, etc. and are willing to take more chances on hosting unknown or debut authors with small followings in comparison to their chain store competitors. Traditionally published authors such as John Grisham, Sherman Alexie, and Neil Gaiman have all claimed independent bookstores contributed immensely to the start of their careers.

For independent or self-published authors, independent bookstores are often the only support they have for selling physical copies of their novels. From personal experience, I know big chain stores have specific criteria and contracts that stipulate what books they can distribute and my book didn’t apply to any of those criteria. That meant my only option for physical book distribution was through independent bookstores such as Old Firehouse and Tattered Covers that are more than happy to help support an indie author such as myself. They even accept online orders for my book, believe it or not, and they’ve been tremendous in helping make my baby ghost story into the success it is today. Without indie bookstores, my writing career would probably be dead in the water instead of the budding little flower it currently is.

Used, Signed, Quirky, and Rare Books, Oh My!

Looking for a novel that’s a little off the mainstream market? Your local indie bookstore probably has it. If they don’t currently have it, they can probably find a copy for you to purchase if you ask nice enough. However, since they stock based on your local reading community’s needs, they might be hiding away some choice reading material that can’t be easily found in chain bookstores. If they also accept used books as part of a trade-in program, your chances for finding a quirky novel at a bargain increases by a lot. From personal experience, my local bookstore also usually has a bounty of signed books from author events or Indiebound deals that chain bookstores and online retailers don’t offer. In fact, one of my best finds at my local hometown bookstore was the entire Ember in the Ashes trilogy at an excellent quality for a combined total of $25 when it usually sells for $43 at normal retail price. Reaper in the Gates was even signed by the author! Given the fact the Ember in the Ashes books quickly became some of my favorite books of all time, I’m still very excited by this discovery.

The best part is that I knew by purchasing this fantastic trilogy through my local independent bookstore, I was also supporting an invaluable foundation of my local reading and writing community. While a book is still a book no matter where or how it is read, it also feels good to support a local business and put my money into the pockets of my fellow readers instead of another corporation. Plus, I get books! So shopping at my local indie bookstore is a win-win all around as it should be for you too.

Want to know why I chose to self-publish my first book? Read my blog post about my decision here or check out my YouTube video about the eight things I learned in my first year of publication.