With two days left in its Kickstarter campaign to raise $70,000 to open a bookstore in Queens, N.Y., the Queens Bookshop Initiative is less than $6,000 away from its goal.
The initiative is led by Vina Castillo, Natalie Noboa and Holly Nikodem, all of whom have bookselling and bookstore management experience. The trio has pointed out that after the closing last year of Barnes & Noble stores in Forest Hills, Bayside and Fresh Meadows, Queens, with a population of 2.3 million, now has just one bricks-and-mortar bookstore selling new books, Astoria Bookshop. The group hopes to open in or near Kew Gardens or Forest Hills.
In an e-mail yesterday, the trio wrote in part, "It has been a fantastic weekend of connecting and Kickstarting... We saw an amazing jump on our Kickstarter from $33k to over $59k, so some of you out there are really pulling for us!...
"We started off Saturday at our booth at the LIC Flea market. Some of you came by and gave us such comfort and words of support; it filled our hearts with so much joy. When Holly met someone who had donated and chose her bag in person, she was literally jumping up and down. We even had shoppers back the Kickstarter in person, right there in the booth! But our day was officially made when we met Jack.
"This tiny human embodies the REASON we are doing this. Before twisting his dad's arm to buy him TWO books (NOT one, it had to be two) he flipped through every page of a Curious George collection, commenting on everything he saw and showing us the pictures as he went. He was full of so much joy and his passion for books totally matches ours!"