Welcome to another edition of Shelf Awareness Extra!, a series of special issues that focus on a particular subject and appear once a month. This edition focuses on Independent Bookstore Day, which takes place on April 25.

Nearly 1,900 bookstores in the U.S., the most ever and up about 250 from last year, will participate in the 13th annual Independent Bookstore Day, which takes place Saturday, April 25. The stores will celebrate with a variety of creative, welcoming events, merchandise, food & drink, merriment, and more, all emphasizing connections between the stores and their communities.

American Booksellers Association CEO Allison Hill noted, "Every year, Independent Bookstore Day gets bigger and better! And it feels more meaningful than ever this year to celebrate what they represent--human connection, diversity and inclusivity, independent thought and independence, and the power of community and truth."

Courtney Wallace, ABA's senior marketing manager, added, "Independent bookstores are turning up the volume on creativity and connection, making this 13th Independent Bookstore Day our biggest yet. From can't-miss exclusives to multi-day festivities, the energy keeps growing. And while the celebration may last a day (or longer), its impact carries on, fueling a love of reading and sustaining the vital community spaces indie bookstores create year-round."

Some of the exclusive items available for Independent Bookstore Day

The many components of Indie Bookstore Day include a range of exclusive merchandise available for booksellers to sell or give customers; events that feature appearances and readings by local authors and illustrators; storytimes; live music; promotions like blind date with a book; support from a variety of publishers and others (lead co-sponsors are Ingram and Penguin Random House; publishing partner sponsors are Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, Edelweiss, Second Story Press, and the regional booksellers associations); related programs provided by Libro.fm and Bookshop.org, among others.

This year actor, director, producer, podcaster and author LeVar Burton is the Indie Bookstore Ambassador, and said when he was appointed, "From my earliest memories, books carried me beyond the world I knew. They let me explore distant planets, ancient kingdoms, and lives very different from my own. Independent bookstores are where those explorations began."

The celebration starts with Spirit Week, with daily themes for booksellers to enjoy leading up to the national Saturday celebration. Monday is silly sock day, followed by plaid Tuesday, then bookstore shirt day on Wednesday, book character dress-up day on Thursday, and each store's own spirit day on Friday.

Bonfire is selling official 2026 Independent Bookstore Day T-shirts and sweatshirts designed by Tom Gauld with the phrase Shop Indie, Shop Local. Bonfire is also selling related and previous official T-shirts and sweatshirts.

Libro.fm will again sponsor a "golden ticket" contest under which the person finding a golden ticket hidden in a bookstore receives 12 audiobook credits. More than 1,500 bookstores are participating; each gets a golden ticket to hide. Also customers can get two free audiobooks when they start a new one credit per month membership with code BOOKSTOREDAY.

Bookshop.org is offering Independent Bookstore Day specials as well.

A map that shows participating bookstores and includes information about bookstore passport programs will appear soon on IndieBound.org. (Stores have until tomorrow, March 31, to sign up to be included on the map.)

Independent Bookstore Day features exclusive, limited-edition merchandise that is a mix of old and new designed to appeal to indie bookstore fans. The deadline for bookstores to order most of the exclusive limited-edition merchandise has passed, but some items are still available, and a few are free.

Adult items include:

An exclusive edition of Crowntide (book 4 in The Lightlark Saga series) by Alex Aster (Amulet Books); an indie exclusive paperback edition of Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot (Dey Street); an exclusive edition of Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron Books); the Fight Evil, Read Books mini tote from Out of Print; The Secret History of Fantasy (Tachyon Publications), which features stories by 20 fantasy legends; a signed exclusive edition of Last Night in Brooklyn by Xochitl Gonzalez (Flatiron Books); Independent Bookstore Day Blackwing pencils; the official Shop Indie, Shop Local tote bag, drawn by Tom Gauld (Drawn & Quarterly); and Independent Bookstore Day T-shirts, sweatshirts, bookmarks, and stickers.

Kids items include:

An exclusive edition of Partypooper (book 20 in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series) by Jeff Kinney (Amulet Books); Warriors: The Adventure Game by Erin Hunter (HarperCollins Children's Books); the We Love Indies: Kids' Activity Book and We Love Indies: Coloring Book, both from the Quarto Group; the Usborne Activity Booklet; and Your Best Tomatoes: From Seed to Plate! from Cool Springs Press/Quarto Group.

Some bookstores are again this year tying in celebrations of their own milestones with Independent Bookstore Day. 

Bromley's Books, Marquette, Mich., is celebrating its one-year anniversary on April 25 with a Wonderland-inspired Mad Hatter's themed tea party with festive decor, treats, and surprise (un)birthday giveaways all day long. Prizes include free blind date ARCs with the first 25 purchases, free Bromley's Books stickers, tote bag giveaways, and more! The store is also taking part in a "book-hop" with other area bookstores.

A Seat at the Table Books, Elk Grove, Calif., is celebrating its fifth anniversary of receiving the key to its space so it will have an Independent Bookstore Day theme all weekend of You're the Key, and giving buyers keys printed by a local maker. Also, owner and founder Emily Autenrieth said, because "we are the only venue for drag in our city, we'll have both a drag storytime at 11:30 and a drag show (18+) at 7."

Book Passage, Corte Madera, Calif., will feature authors on April 25. Jane Smiley will discuss her new book, Lidie; Deborah Santana will present her new book, Loving the Fire; and the Local Author Book Fair at the store includes more than 40 authors from Left Coast Writers and the California Writers Club Marin for meet-and-greets and signings (during the Book Fair, Jasmin Darznik will speak).

Likewise, Next Chapter Café and Book Shop, Hagerstown, Md., which opened last November, is hosting a Local Author Showcase event on April 25. Some 17 authors have signed up for tables where customers will have the opportunity to chat with the authors and get personalized copies. The authors will also participate in a panel discussion about their books and their writing process and inspiration. In addition, the bookstore is having a scavenger hunt for kids.

Old Town Books, Alexandria, Va., is celebrating all day Saturday with a full schedule of activities for all ages. They include a musical storytime; an appearance by Frog and Toad for a special meet and greet; treats from Nicole's Kitchen and other small businesses; an evening audiobook walk; a prize wheel spin with every purchase; an official tote with a purchase of $75 or more; and more.

Autumn Leaf Books, Camas, Wash., will celebrate the Day by hosting two local authors, Kay Michaels, author of Autumn Leaf Bookshop ("no relation--just really cool!" owner Eden noted), who has a new romance coming out, and E Barbee, with a new fantasy novel. The store will also have a prize wheel for everyone who makes a purchase.

The Doylestown Bookshop, Doylestown, Pa., will celebrate on April 25 with raffles, games, and more as well as a book signing with local indie authors Kimberly Brighton, Jamie Cooperstein, and R.B. Shifman. The Lahaska Bookshop will have a book signing with Natalie Pompilio for her book Philadelphia: A Walk Through History.

Two of the book clubs of Under the Umbrella, Salt Lake City, Utah, will meet on April 25--the Sapphic book club and Scream Queers (Horror) book club. The store will also celebrate with a DIY/origami bookmark station, a one-day drink special, and a prize wheel that customers can spin with every purchase. In addition, the store is partnering with the Legendarium bookstore on a stamp rally (a kind of passport event) with prizes that include drink coupons and gift cards to both stores.

On April 25, the Bookshop, Nashville, Tenn., is featuring "exclusive merch, giveaways galore (spin the Wheel of Bookishness and win a prize!), bookish blind dates," and more. The store is also participating in the Middle Tennessee Indie Bookstore Crawl.

Passport Programs
Passport programs that reward book lovers for visiting many bookstores in a particular area have been popular since Indie Bookstore Day became a national event. Some focus on the Day itself. Others are in effect for a week. A few last for a month. All involve "passports" for stores to stamp to show that the holder visited them. The programs usually offer rewards to participants, particularly discounts on purchases, some for up to a year.

Seattle-area bookstores are once again staging Seattle Independent Bookstore Day, which this year challenges book lovers to visit all 33 participating stores (during the 10 days between April 25 and May 4). The prize is a "bookstore day champion stamp card," good for a one-time 25% discount at each of the 33 stores. Those who visit at least five stores receive a single 25% discount card good at one of the 33 stores.

To fund its activities, the organization is selling official SIBD T-shirts, sweatshirts, and hoodies designed by Stephen Crowe of Third Place Books on Bonfire.

The Chicagoland Bookstore Crawl has 81 participating bookstores and offers several tiers of awards. Book lovers who visit 10 stores on April 25 receive a 10% discount at all participating stores for a year, and those who visit 15 stores receive a 15% discount for a year. Those book lovers visiting 10 or more stores also will be able to receive 2026 Chicagoland Bookstore Crawl Champion Bragging Rights and discounts. 

The Brooklyn Bookstore Crawl runs for the week from Saturday, April 18, to Indie Bookstore Day on the 25th. There are 34 participating bookstores, and visitors to all stores in a neighborhood receive a 25% discount on a purchase within two months. Participants can add neighborhoods and discounts. Anyone who goes to all 34 stores receives a Crawl tote bag. A highlight of this crawl is the afterparty on Saturday from 5-8 p.m. at the Center for Fiction that features drinks, raffles, special literary guests, and more.

This year's Twin Cities Independent Passport program, organized by Rain Taxi, will include 36 bookstores and run from Wednesday, April 22, through Sunday, April 26. Each stamped page of the passport, designed by local artist Kevin Cannon, becomes a future discount coupon for the stamping store; multiple stamps make passport holders eligible for a variety of prizes.

The Columbus Indie Bookstore Crawl runs April 25 and 26 includes 19 indie bookstores in the Columbus, Ohio, area. Readers who visit at least seven stores are entered into a lottery to win a literary gift basket.

In Charlotte, N.C., 25 indie bookstores are sponsoring the Greater Charlotte Book Crawl. It runs the entire month of April and includes Indie Bookstore Day as a highlight. The program has three tiers, rewarding people who visit seven stores with a free audiobook at Libro.fm, those who visit 15 with a bookish poster, and those who visit all 25 stores with a tote bag as well as the chance to win the grand prize of a $20 gift card for each of the 25 stores, for a retail value of $500.

Samantha Schoech and Pete Mulvihill at California Bookstore Day, in 2014

Origin Story
Like many good bookselling ideas that have become national hits, Independent Bookstore Day began at the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, when Samantha Schoech and Pete Mulvihill of Green Apple Books, San Francisco, suggested creating a California Bookstore Day modeled on Independent Record Store Day. The first iteration, in 2014--which included the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association (both associations have since merged to create the California Independent Booksellers Alliance)--was so popular that it expanded nationwide in 2015, receiving support from the ABA, which took over management of the Day in 2019. Schoech headed the program through its 2021 edition.

Canadian independent booksellers also celebrate Independent Bookstore Day, a tradition that began in 2018 with the first Canadian Independent Bookstore Day and has aligned with the U.S. version since then. Canadian Independent Bookstore Day developed from Authors for Indies Day, which began in 2015.

More than 300 Canadian bookstores are participating this year and will offer a variety of celebratory activities that are similar to what's being offered in the U.S., including customer giveaways, discounts, exclusive products, author events, and more.

Exclusive giveaways from publishers include CIBD-branded sticker sheets and special book annotation kits from Penguin Random House Canada; exclusive stickers designed by Mélanie Watt from Scholastic Canada; bookplates from Annick Press; Golden Tickets for free audiobook credits from Libro.fm; Books Are Safe Spaces stickers from Second Story Press; activity books from Canadian Manda Group and Quarto Books; poetry postcards from the League of Canadian Poets; signed editions of S.A. Cosby's Blacktop Wasteland; and more. (A few of the exclusives are offered by U.S. bookstores, too.) In addition, artist and illustrator Sid Sharp was commissioned to make artwork for CIBD. His illustration "celebrates the magic of indie bookstores and the people who bring them to life."

This year's celebration again features the Contest for Book Lovers, under which people who purchase books at a Canadian Independent Booksellers Association store on April 25 can enter a drawing; prizes include four C$200 (about US$145) gift cards and a grand prize C$1,000 (US$725) gift card to a bookstore of the winner's choice. Each book purchased is worth one entry, and books written or illustrated by Canadians are worth double.

Canadian authors are as excited by and supportive of Canadian Independent Bookstore Day as booksellers and publishers, especially at a time when Canada's neighbor to the south isn't acting very neighborly. The Canadian Independent Booksellers Association highlighted "Author Love Notes," featuring Canadian authors expressing their appreciation for independent bookstores.

For example, Kim Fu, author of The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts, wrote: "Twice in the last month, I've visited one of my local independent bookstores, gushed with a bookseller--who knew me by name--over what we were reading, and left with something new. Fifteen years ago, an indie housed the reading series I cohosted as a student and let us sell hand-sewn, occasion-specific zines. (Pulpfiction Books on Main, still going strong!) These stores are a bastion of real-world community in my life, especially as it gets easier and easier to hide in our homes, our heads, our screens. I owe indie bookstores an enormous debt as an author, for all of their excitement and support of my own work, but a much deeper one as a reader."

Dania Idriss, author of Tales of the Mountains and the Sea, wrote: "Independent bookstores hold the souls of the cities they serve. They are the last frontier against algorithmic standardization. Whenever I've doom-scrolled my way into hopelessness, I wander around my local bookshops (probably too often) to remember that there is still some soul left in this world. Thank you, Pages on Kensington (and resident cat, Mr. Kilgore Trout), The Next Page, Shelf Life Books, and Nocturne Books, for making Calgary habitable. Thank you for creating safe spaces for creatives to gather and share new ideas. Thank you for existing."

Liz Johnston, author of The Fall Down Effect, wrote: "You indie booksellers often joke about those readers who come in with the vaguest descriptions--'I think it had a blue cover?'--but when we readers come to you with these helpless questions, you perform miracles. You find that blue-cover book or you put something better in our hands. Thank you for all you do to support Canadian authors and publishers, build a literary community, and foster a reading culture. As a debut author, I can't wait for the first time I wander into an independent bookstore and see my book on the shelf before walking out with my next great read."

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Last year the Indie Bookstore Day idea grew beyond North America in a huge way. Booksellers from around the world organized the Global Book Crawl, which this year takes place April 20-26 and includes hundreds of stores. As organizers said, "The second edition grows in participation, in territories, and in ways of working together. More bookshops, more cities, more languages connected by one simple idea: reading is also about encounter and community." 

Each city or region designs its own crawl. The countries with the most participating bookstores are Australia, Ireland, Switzerland, and the U.S. The areas in the United States that are part of Global Book Crawl include Atlanta, Ga., Brooklyn, N.Y., Chequamegon Bay in Wisconsin, Louisville, Ky., Oklahoma City, Okla., Portland Ore., Queens, N.Y., San Gabriel Valley in California, Southeast Pennsylvania, Southwestern Oklahoma, and St. Petersburg-Tampa Bay in Florida.