We are beyond grateful to announce that we have been selected to receive a “Survive to Thrive” grant from the Book Industry Charitable Foundation, along with 114 other bookstores and comic shops in 48 states. The grant recipients were determined by a juried application process with the goal of assisting stores that were poised to make a strong recovery from the pandemic. The Survive to Thrive initiative was launched in March with a leading gift of $500,000 jointly from Ingram Charities and Ingram Content Group (our book distributor). Survive to Thrive received strong support from across the publishing and bookselling communities with leading gifts from Bookshop.org, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster. Special thanks to the 12 authors and creators led by Garth Stein and Amor Towles, who made a combined $40,000 matching gift, which influenced an additional $55,000. Thanks also to An Unlikely Story bookstore for their benefit auction. And of course, thanks to you, our customers, who helped us “survive” the pandemic through your patience, understanding, and loyalty through 13 months of being closed to browsing. Your continued support will certainly bring us through to “thrive!”
What will we do with the finds? There are some restrictions (for example, we cannot use them to pay publisher obligations), but they will cover some unexpected expenses we had after being closed for so long. But the most exciting part is we will be updating our computers and technology—bye-bye, Windows 7!
