Just days ahead of Chicago Bookstore Day on July 12, California Bookstore Day, which inspired it, announced a new sponsor. The event has secured $15,000 from Penguin Random House to underwrite next spring’s second annual celebration.
In delivering the news of PRH’s support for the West Coast event, which will take place on Saturday May 2, 2015, president and U.S. COO of PRH, Madeline McIntosh, said: "California Bookstore Day was a terrific event this year—our publishers and sales colleagues loved being part of it, and so did our authors. We want to help bring even bigger crowds into the bookstores next May."
The success of this year’s inaugural California Bookstore Day, which took place at 93 bookstores throughout the state, has already made regional bookstore groups in other parts of the country look to it as a model for bringing attention to independent bookstores. Although the idea of a National Bookstore Day was discussed at the Town Hall Forum at BEA in May, no specific country-wide celebration is planned.
Instead, the New England Independent Booksellers Association addressed the issue in a newsletter from earlier this month. The group wrote: "All we know for certain at this point is that there will not be National Bookstore Day; that the ABA will be helping us financially and working with publishers; that once each region has determined what they are doing, all the Bookstore Days will take place on the same day—most likely early May 2015."
