Indie Bookstore Day gains steam
Independent Bookstore Day activity is building toward Saturday, April 25, with weeklong local crawls and events — for example, Snohomish/Monroe’s Indie Bookstore Week runs April 18–25 and dozens of towns are planning crawls or stamp programs. The Los Angeles Times reports the indie boom continued last year with 422 new U.S. bookstores opening in 2025, a 31% increase, and CNET notes Spotify is now linking audiobook discovery with hard‑copy purchases via Bookshop to steer sales toward independents. (bookstoreadonline.com, latimes.com, cnet.com)
Independent Bookstore Day is turning into a weeklong retail event in parts of the U.S. before the national celebration lands on Saturday, April 25. (bookweb.org) The American Booksellers Association said more than 2,000 stores in all 50 states and U.S. territories have signed up for the 13th annual event, with more than 40 bookstore crawls planned in more than half the states. (bookweb.org) In Snohomish County, Washington, Indie Bookstore Week runs from April 18 through April 25, and the Snohomish County Tribune said 13 independent bookstores are participating countywide. Monroe’s Main Street Books and We Be Book’N are among the stores lining up events and stamp-style promotions. (snoho.com) Chicago is scaling the one-day version into a regional crawl with 80-plus bookstores. The organizers say readers who visit 10 stores on April 25 get 10% off for a year at participating shops, and 15 stores unlocks 15% off. (chilovebooks.com) The turnout comes as the store count keeps rising. The Los Angeles Times, citing American Booksellers Association data, reported that 422 new U.S. bookstores opened in 2025, up 31% from 2024. (latimes.com) Fast Company reported the same trade-group data showed the number of independent bookstores has climbed about 70% since 2020. That growth has pushed the business back into neighborhoods where chains and online sellers had thinned out physical book retail. (fastcompany.com) The sales ecosystem is shifting with the event. Spotify said on April 15 that users in the United States and United Kingdom can now buy physical books through the Spotify app on Android via Bookshop.org links. (newsroom.spotify.com) Spotify first announced the Bookshop.org partnership on February 5 alongside a feature called Page Match, which lets readers move between a print or e-book edition and the audiobook version of the same title. CNET reported the new hard-copy purchase button is now live in the app. (newsroom.spotify.com, cnet.com) Bookshop.org says it supports more than 2,500 stores and has raised more than $46.6 million for local bookstores. Its support pages say affiliated bookstores can earn 30% of the cover price on sales they drive, while a share of other sales goes into a pool distributed to independent stores. (bookshop.org, support.bookshop.org) For booksellers, the next marker is fixed: April 25 is still the national one-day event. The difference in 2026 is that more towns are treating it like a crawl, a passport game, or a full week on the calendar instead of a single Saturday. (bookweb.org, bookweb.org)
