Main Street/Shop Local

Michelle Obama visits Tattered Cover, Seminary Co-op; Fountain Bookstore tweet goes viral; Jake’s Place, Bermuda Book Store, A Freethinker’s Corner open; Porter Square, Malaprop’s open pop-ups; A Novel Idea, Eso Won Books, The Story House, Politics and Prose, Village Books, Powell’s, Gibson’s, Northshire, Mclean & Eakin featured in local news; and more.

Amidst a wide range of shop local festivities and author events, this year booksellers celebrated Indies First on Small Business Saturday by giving away copies of Jason Reynolds’ Ghost to kids in underserved communities.

Readers will share their love of bookstores by taking part in the Love Your Bookstore Challenge between November 10 and 16.

The company’s request for proposals, which kicked off the search for a second location last year, led to a bidding war among 238 cities and regions, though the proposals have largely been kept under wraps.

The policy would recognize chain stores as a distinct land use and would require a conditional use permit for such businesses to open and operate in a neighborhood business district.

This July, independent booksellers across the U.S. celebrated another year of Find Waldo Local, the shop-local challenge co-sponsored by Candlewick Press and the American Booksellers Association.

The program, which will send up to 50 retailers to Washington, D.C., celebrates Main Street business owners who are community leaders and strong retail industry advocates at all levels of government.