In 2012, Samantha Schoech and Pete Mulvihill came to the board of the (then) Northern California Independent Booksellers Association with a very cool idea--to create a California Bookstore Day modeled on the very popular Independent Record Store Day. Booksellers up and down California would throw their own special parties and festivities, and publishers would be invited to create unique literary items to be sold on that day--and not online!
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| Samantha Schoech and Pete Mulvihill at the first Bookstore Day, in 2014 | |
The board embraced that idea and asked Samantha to lead the charge. She did so with passion and faith! Even that first year, participating bookstores saw a gratifying jump in sales and press attention, and the next year we decided to take the idea to booksellers across the country, for the first annual Independent Bookstore Day.
Part of the fun of the event was seeing how booksellers took the concept and each made it uniquely their own. The mantra was "do what you do every day, only make a big deal about it!" Stores scheduled special readings, held drawings and trivia contests and many, many in-store activities for book lovers of all ages. In my stores one year, we created a week of events to celebrate our 45th store birthday, culminating in IBD. And every year, sales were amazing on that day, even in those years when our celebration was more modest. It was truly an idea whose time had come.
Though the years, Samantha has kept the energy up brilliantly, each year bringing ever more booksellers and publishers to the party.
The primary benchmark of the success of the venture was sales. We wanted to bring people to all of our stores, and many stores banded together to support each other with bookstore tours, "passports" for book lovers, and mutually beneficial marketing. And every year, booksellers large and small reported wonderful, heartening, and exciting sales on that day.
This was Samantha's last year with IBD, and as she continues her bookish, literary career, and ABA takes over the logistics of the celebration, I want to lead our community in a toast to her beautiful and successful efforts to support and promote all of our different stores. Sam (and Pete!)--thank you from Pegasus Books for adding both tens of thousands of dollars to our bottom line during these years, and a happy, bright and purely fun event to our calendar.
Cheers all!