Book Camp!
what it's really like to hang with 900+ booksellers in Cincinnati
Hi! This newsletter is coming to you a few days later than normal because last Wednesday I was deep into the bookish dream that is the annual American Booksellers Association national conference. Over 900 booksellers descended on Cincinnati, Ohio to gather and learn more about this important, weird, beautiful, hard work that we do.
Guys, it was so fun. Over the course of the four days I was in Cincinnati, I kept asking myself, how did I get here? How did I get fortunate enough to be here? A big question I don’t have all the answers to, but I hope that I can take a little bit of the fun and fortitude I gathered and spread it around in my own community.
Bookstore Tour of Cincinnati
My first day in Cincinnati included one of my favorite word combinations: bookstore tour. Picture this: hundreds of booksellers packed into three massive buses and carted around the city to visit Cincinnati’s many indie bookstores. My tour visited four gorgeous and singular indie stores and I loved every minute of it.
Downbound Books in Cincinnati’s Northside neighborhood is 500 square feet and it’s mission and values shout through every one of those square feet.
Joseph-Beth Booksellers is like an independent Barnes & Noble and I could have spent hours and maybe whole days in there without event noticing.
The Bookery is a brand new store opened by a husband and wife team just over a year ago. The hopefulness and courage of such an endeavor was everywhere in that store.
The Book Matters in Milford, OH was located in an 1860s building with paper hearts hanging from the gorgeous exposed beams and an homage to their beloved UPS delivery person in the window.
Finally, we visited the brick & mortar home of The Cincy Book Bus, a non-profit bookseller that, yes, started as a real bus with the mission of bringing the joy of owning books to everyone. Every dollar you spend there goes to buying children’s books for classroom libraries.
There is nothing like visiting five brave, essential, quirky small businesses to make you reflect on the absolutely essential work of independent bookstores. I know I might be biased because I work in one, but imagine for a minute a world without these stores, without the brave, passionate people who started them. I know almost nothing about it, but running a business seems like an absolutely reckless, daily shot in the dark. And yet here are these five vibrant businesses are - lighthouses connecting their customers with joy for joy’s sake.
If you can, give some love to an indie bookstore this weekend. Or your local coffeeshop or movie theater or gift store. I don’t want to live in a world without them.
The rest of the conference was a blur of wonder and joy and learning and trying to keep my cool.
Ask me about the time I was behind Emma Straub in the breakfast buffet line.
Ask me about the fancy publisher dinner I attended with Laurie Halse Anderson. She’s so cool.
Ask me about the time I attended a session called “Everything you want to know about bookselling but are afraid to ask” and who was at my session but THE Lauren Groff who is in the process of opening her independent bookstore, The Lynx, in Gainesville, Florida which will specialize in selling banned books. I was really cool and chill about it as you can imagine.
Ask me about the time Hanif Abdurraqib signed my book and I was unable to form words, so I just smiled really big underneath my mask and hoped that communicated even a fraction of what his work gives me.
Ask me about the time Casey McQuiston signed my book and told me my name “goes hard.” Ask me about Casey’s very good, very smutty new book which I finished reading on the flight home.
Ask me about the two friends I made who own Fable Hollow Bookshoppe a fantasy-themed bookshop they opened last year in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Ask me about the magic trick in which I crammed an obscene, impossible number of books into my suitcase.
I need to sit in a quiet room and think about all of this for approximately three weeks.
I love books. I love people. I love bookstores. I love small businesses. I love the part of us that bets on each other even when the math is against us.
I am scared more than I’m not, but I am a little hopeful, too.
I love you.
Love,
Rosamond
3 things I love- Cincy, booksellers and youuuuu
Oh, this sounds like so much fun! I'd love to go to one of the ABA events, but sadly, I don't own or work at a bookstore. It sounds like you had a blast!