August 20, 2024, 10:56am
I’m happy to report that the internet has been redeemed for another day. I recently came across this very impressive and carefully curated map of bookstores on www.iheartbookstores.com, a simple and very useful site: a searchable, scrollable, and sortable map and database of 6,001 non-chain bookstores. Pairs well with our literary atlas of America!
The site is the work of one very dedicated person, and I love its delightfully old-school design (the bottom of the page looks to have a little Geocities-style view counter) and charming backstory (the project is “a three year labor of love…a product of insomnia brought on by the stress of an out-of-state move with my family”).
The selection criteria for the map are quite rigorous. This project isn’t attempting to locate each and every bookstore, but rather what we might call the indie portion of booksellers, featuring stores that focus on bookselling, have a brick-and-mortar shop, and have fewer than 20 locations: “The vast majority of locations included I consider independent in the sense that they aren’t part of a retail conglomerate and don’t have stock ticker symbols.” It might seem a little finicky, but when so much of the web can feel like unwieldy information dumps these days, I was refreshed to find this list to be so thoughtfully curated and edited.
The Map also features a lot of handy resources as well, compiling links to various booksellers associations, fairs, auctions, news sites (including Lit Hub, thanks!), and more. It’s an impressive collection of book-related stuff.
It’s a great map, and worth poking around. Personally, I’ve got three weddings to road-trip to before the summer is over, and I’m already planning to use this map to find some fun pitstops along the way.