Welcome to From the Front porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business, and life in the South.

I love walking into a bookstore. It's like all my friends are sitting on shelves waving their pages at me. To Haramoffee.

I'm Annie Jones, owner of the Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia, and today we're talking about indie bookstore day.

If you are a long time lover of bookstores, then you know that the last Saturday in April is devoted to indie bookstore days and celebrating them.

This is the case not only in Thomasville, Georgia where we are, but all over the country.

So if you have a local independently owned bookstore near you, chances are they are celebrating this day in some form or fashion.

This year, indie bookstore day is on Saturday, April 24th. If you feel like, wait, didn't we just celebrate indie bookstore day? I mean, kind of time is a joke.

But in reality, 2020 was obviously a bizarre year. And so the powers that be the geniuses behind indie bookstore day moved our celebration to August of 2020 rather than April.

Most stores had to still do virtual celebrations, including ours. That's kind of how we mostly celebrated indie bookstore day was virtually.

This year we are doing a hodgepodge hybrid indie bookstore day, both virtually and in person.

We are celebrating with some in store events that we thought could still be safe, like outdoor story time at the amphitheater and a local portrait artist, Alice and Fairbrother is coming to do watercolor portraits.

So there are still fun things happening at the store. It is a different kind of year, like I'm not going to be schlepping hot dogs outside the bookshelf, even then that's what I really wish I was doing.

One day soon, we will schlep hot dogs again. If you're not familiar, I love a low hot dog and it was my dream to give away free hot dogs at indie bookstore day and we were able to do that.

So dream accomplished though we're not going to be doing that in 2021 instead what we are going to be doing is the couple of in store events.

And then we're going to be doing a virtual happy hour. So if you don't have a local independent bookstore, but you love and support the bookshelf, then I think this would be a fun thing for you to do.

You can join us for happy hour. There is ticket information in the show notes and it would be a great way to join us and to kind of celebrate.

Here's the reason we're talking about indie books today on this podcast from the front porch is, as I say, at the end of every episode, a production of the bookshelf and the bookshelf is an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia.

We have been in existence in Thomasville since 1984. Jordan and I took over the bookshelf. Oh my gosh.

Eight or nine, eight or nine years ago. And we have been a part of indie bookstore day since the holidays, it's a holiday right since the holidays inception.

And it is one of my favorite days at the bookshelf. I have long loved independent bookstores. You're going to hear exactly why I love independent bookstores at the end of this episode.

But indie books are just a great way to celebrate what indie books today stand for.

And to celebrate that further, I wanted to devote an episode to indie books or day to the bookshelf and to the bookshelf staff.

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