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.