8 Ways to Sunday

Independently-owned bookstores often struggle to remain competitive against giants like Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Amazon.com. If you’d like to support locally-owned book sellers, BookSense.com is a good place to start. It’s the Internet arm of a national marketing campaign that the site describes thusly:

What is Book Sense?

Book Sense is a national marketing campaign on behalf of the independent bookstores of America. It is both a local and national effort to shine a light on the knowledge and diversity of independent bookstores, via the Book Sense Bestseller List — now running in more than a dozen newspapers as well as monthly in U.S. News and World Report and on CSPAN — and Book Sense Picks — a monthly selection of eclectic new books chosen by independent booksellers.

Book Sense also offers a gift card welcome at hundreds of participating independent bookstores nationwide! And then there is, of course, BookSense.com.

What is BookSense.com?

BookSense.com is a family of independent-bookseller websites. (And it’s the e-commerce arm of the American Booksellers Association’s Book Sense program.)

When you visit a BookSense.com virtual bookstore, you will experience the knowledge and passion of independent booksellers who share their love of books with their customers and their communities. You’ll have access to information and news about local authors, store events, and myriad staff recommendations — and you will also be presented with content that reflects the collective wisdom of booksellers from all 50 states and Puerto Rico.

To get started, enter your ZIP code in the form labeled “Find a Store with Book Sense.” I found six bookstores in nearby Wichita, only two of which I’d heard of before.

(Props: pythonfood.com)

Updates

• 11/7/2006 @ 3:26 AM — I didn’t notice it at first, but there’s a more fine-grained store search available as well. Search by store name, city, specialty, etc.