Are you INDIE-pendent??

It's time for Little Miss Green Jeans to jump on a soap-box again (yep, and at this height I need a really big one to see over all the heads! hee hee)

We've joined a great new movement called IndieBound. It's run by the American Booksellers Association and has replaced BookSense. It is also an online community where you can touch base with other independent retailers and shoppers... it's in testing form right now (we're a tester at Aaron's Books), but when it's up and running for the general public it's well worth the $0 it costs to join!

I can not stress enough how important shopping local is... especially in this rotten economy. If we don't support the "mom & Pops" now, we're going to see many many towns with shuttered and boarded up store fronts as never seen before. Why does shopping independent and local matter? Well for every $100 you spend at a chain less than $50 goes back to your community and that includes all salaries! For every $100 you spend at a local store more than $70 (and sometimes as much as $90 in our case) stays in your community... paying for your parks, schools, police, etc.

Here's another perspective in relation to shopping for books online (from the Great Lakes Booksellers Association)
Local author events sponsored by Amazon: 0

Number of your townspeople working for Amazon: 0

AMount donated by Amazon to your town: 0

Amount of sales tax paid by Amazon to your community: 0

Think about what those numbers are for your local bookstore
Here are ours (esitmates)

Local author events 2007-2008: 10

Employees: 3

Doantions: well over $300

Sales taxes paid to community: over $3000

Now where is it more beneficial to shop??? That extra $3 you saved at Amazon could have helped pay for that new park your town is planning, or the needed new textbooks for the high school if you had bought that same book from a local independent bookstore!

(jumping off soapbox... but just for a little bit! hee hee)