A [TfTi] 2-fer: Love Your Local Bookstore & The Power of Play

Saving local bookstores from Amazon?

I’ll start with the message from Bookshop.org that came in a few days ago, summarizing what this new player in the book world has accomplished in it’s first two years: distributing over $21 million to local, independent bookstores.

If you’ve clicked on any of my links to books over the last year or so, you found yourself on their website. Here’s the short answer why I moved my affiliate account there:

The image is an excerpt from the Bookshop.org 2nd Anniversary Impact Statement, which I urge you to click through and learn more about.

Through profit-sharing, they provide a way for independent bookstores to participate in ecommerce, without needing giant warehouses and shipping facilities.

From the report:

“One of the biggest challenges indie bookstores face is navigating online sales. It’s an uphill battle trying to develop the infrastructure to even get in the door, let alone compete. Bookshop gives indie bookstores a real opportunity to establish themselves in the online space and give their customers — especially ones outside their local market — another option when buying books.”
— Justin Moore, Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee & Books, Philadelphia, PA

They provide authors another outlet for selling their books. Even though our books are published, printed, and obtained from Amazon’s KDP platform, both Read ‘Em & Reap and The How to Write a Book Book are available on Bookshop.org.

And they provide you, me, and other book lovers with “a socially conscious way to buy books online that is quick, easy, and frustration-free.” The report reminds us, in bold-faced red letters: “Always try to buy directly from independent bookstores when you can!”

So how can you be a bigger part of the solution?

In addition to buying your books from Bookshop.org, join them! The report invites you:

“If you’re a publisher, author, influencer, or cultural organization, become an affiliate and use Bookshop.org links in your content, social media, digital advertising, and email marketing. You’ll earn a commission AND help preserve indie bookstores!”

Oh, and yes, you might pay a little more for some books this way. But that’s offset by both the commissions you can earn and the satisfaction of making a real difference to the local, independent bookstores we love so much!

The Payoffs from Play

Jumping to a completely different topic, I found myself binging on two playlists about play, via a recent TED newsletter. I’m going to give you the links to both in a moment and let you luxuriate in them yourself.

But two brief points that jumped out at me. First, one list opens with a video by Stuart Brown, MD., author of Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul. About 9 minutes in, he shows a slide of his daughter as a young child, describing her as “spinning yarns” while engaged in “imaginative play.”

He goes on with a statement about the essence of play in how our brains work that, for me, connects with the writing and author support work that Yvonne and I do:

“We all have an internal narrative that’s our own inner story. The unit of intelligibility of most of our brains is the story.“

No matter what your book is about, we’ll help you enrich it with storytelling.

So here are those TED playlist links I promised you:

Putting Play to Work

I can never think about play without our friend Sybil Stershic coming to mind, now that she’s a Certified Facilitator in LEGO^® SERIOUS PLAY^®. As her website explains, organizations can solve problems and achieve breakthroughs with this facilitated play method:

“Using the neural connections in our hands, we can better ‘imagine, describe, and make sense of situations, initiate change and improvement, and even create something new.'”

Imagine, describe, and make sense of situations, eh? Sounds an awful lot like Brown’s concept of “imaginative play” and that “unit of intelligibility,” the story.

You can learn more about Sybil and her work in Yvonne’s interview with her, Is it Work or Is it Play? Maybe It’s Both! Sybil Stershic Talks Building Blocks as Serious Play, on Yvonne’s YouTube channel here).

Lots of video, I know. Binge wisely!

A [TfTi] 2-fer: Love Your Local Bookstore & The Power of Play