Friday, August 10, 2012

Five reasons why your local bookshop is awesome

1. The staff! Good local bookshops are filled with helpful, book-loving staff. If you want a book recommendation for your eight-year-old niece or your eighty-year-old great aunt, they’ll be there to steer you in the right direction and provide useful, unbiased recommendations. Your local bookstore isn’t going to suggest a book based off algorithms or paid promotions – their feedback is based off a real, genuine understanding of readers and a love of books.

2. Events! Bookstore events are a great low-cost (sometimes free) way to meet your favourite author or discover a new one. They bring people together as a community and give writers and readers a chance to interact. At a bookstore event you can hear an author read from their work, get your book signed, listen to a debate and find out fascinating behind-the-scenes information on how a book was written. You're pretty much guaranteed to learn something new and interesting.

3. Environmental friendliness! Ordering a book from the US or UK and having it flown into Australia isn’t the most environmentally friendly practice. Shopping at your local bookstore means being able to worry less about your carbon footprint.

4. Discoverability! Don’t know what you are looking for? Want to browse through books and be taken by surprise or uncover a hidden gem? Head into your local bookstore and you can scan the shelves, hold actual books in your hands and see their size and weight, read the first few pages and observe what other people are buying in real life. Quite simply, bookstores are still the best damn way to discover books.

5. Supporting local business! Local bookstores are employing people in your city or town, supporting Australian authors and Australian publishers and building an important sense of community. Buy local, feel good – everybody wins! Woo!


This Saturday 11 August is National Bookshop Day. Support your local bookshop by heading in-store to buy a book! Need a suggestion of what to read? Our website features some excellent options.


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